


The Darkest Nights

by tptplayer5701



Series: "Mind Games"-verse [37]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dog Miraculous, Female Friendship, Friendship, Horror, Identity Reveal, London, Miraculous Holder Félix Graham de Vanily, Post-Hawk Moth Defeat, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Supernatural Elements, gothic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 42,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptplayer5701/pseuds/tptplayer5701
Summary: A "Mind Games"-verse story:Soft footfalls on the pavement behind her. The footsteps accelerated, drawing closer. Closer, closer, the sound came, heavy and solid. Eyes widening in fear, she broke into a sprint. Footsteps pounded behind her. She started to turn, and something slammed into her side, driving her down into the rough alley surface, scraping her arm on the gravel and tearing her jacket sleeve, pushing pebbles into the side of her elbow. Her head hit the ground, and stars flashed in her eyes. A wild face with slate-grey eyes and a tangled mane of brown hair leered down at her.
Relationships: Amélie Graham de Vanily & Bridgette, Amélie Graham de Vanily & Félix Graham de Vanily, Barkk & Félix Graham de Vanily, Bridgette & Félix Graham de Vanily, Bridgette & Original Character, Chloé Bourgeois & Bridgette, Chloé Bourgeois & Félix Graham De Vanily
Series: "Mind Games"-verse [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666807
Comments: 146
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a little different from my usual action/adventure/friendship stories – horror, and specifically in the Gothic horror style. As a warning in advance, this story does earn that “Teen” rating that I give to all my stories (though it does not go beyond “T”). The villain is the Stripper Ripper from [“The Hound and the Maiden,”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262468/chapters/66603223) so that should give you some idea of what to expect. Thank you to bryguy2324 on FF.net for beta-reading this story, though I did give it another round of editing after he read it.

The Maughan Library’s Round Reading Room was deathly silent, the occasional turning of a page the only sound to be heard. Bri’s eyes strained from the harsh fluorescent overhead light shining onto her tablet and almost whiting it out as she hunched over it. When she closed her eyes for a brief moment of rest, she became aware of the faint hum coming from the lights, the steady ticking of the clock in the corner of the room above the doorway. The sky visible through the glass ceiling was pitch black, the moon hidden behind a thick fall cloud cover, leaving the room almost entirely dark, save the fluorescent lights built into the open floor of the next level and the lamps set on the tables. It was a pity she couldn’t just turn off the fluorescents in favour of the warm yellow lamplight. But alas. She smacked the lamp sitting on the table next to her, but it still wouldn’t turn on. Perhaps next time she came, she would take it apart to check the wiring; she didn’t have the focus or the energy left to do it tonight. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, trying to force some of the tension out and regain her concentration for this last push. But between the late nights spent out patrolling and the early mornings trying to get in her hours at the repair shop, Bri had built up a considerable sleep debt, and suddenly it was all coming due at once. And of course this particularly-complex circuit diagram wasn’t helping matters.

“You really didn’t have to come with me,” Anne pointed out, a concerned edge to her voice. “I’m sure I could have persuaded one of the guys at the desk to walk me home after they closed up.”

Bri opened her eyes and forced a smile. “No, it’s okay,” she insisted. They sat across from each other on the far side of the deserted reading room from the doorway, no one else was in sight, yet her whisper still felt too loud for the funereal atmosphere that the library always exuded this late at night. “If I’d stayed home there’s no way I would have gotten anything done, but at least I finished _one_ diagram here.”

“I have to admit, working _with_ someone is always more productive than trying to work alone,” agreed Anne with a smile. She patted the pile of musty old books next to her. “If I were here by myself, I’m pretty sure I would’ve given in to the temptation of social media at least two centuries ago!”

Bri hummed in agreement and chuckled. “Let me guess: social media’s why you’re still doing the research for this stupid 20-page preliminary draft that’s due in the morning?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

Anne stared intently at the book lying open in front of her. “… I refuse to answer that.”

Bri giggled and returned to her circuit diagram, her focus finally having returned. She could see the way the professor expected them to put it together, of course, but it wasn’t the most efficient method. If she switched two connections and shifted another one down half a centimetre, it would work at least 14% better. With a couple notations in the margin, she indicated as much. She smiled softly: her father would be impressed.

A few minutes later Anne let out a heavy sigh, her eyes darting around uneasily to take in the deserted room. “I am glad you decided to join me. Something about being out alone late at night gives me the creeps.”

“I can’t imagine what,” Bri observed wryly, a shiver running down her spine. “The Ripper’s getting worse.”

Anne nodded, a troubled look in her eyes. “It was bad enough at first to know we had a Jack the Ripper wannabe haunting the streets,” she commented. “But something about the last few attacks is just…” she let out a breath. “Did you see the news report on his latest attack? It sounded positively brutal.”

 _You have no idea_ … Bri thought, almost unable to hide her revulsion. The papers had been barred from publishing any pictures of the last Stripper Ripper attack, but the image was still seared into the backs of Bri’s eyelids whenever she closed her eyes. It had happened two nights ago while she was on patrol. She had been on the far side of the city during the attack itself and only stumbled upon the grisly scene after the Ripper had left. The woman’s chest had been slashed open from collarbone to pelvis – from the look of horror on her face she had still been alive and felt every moment of it. Her ravaged chest had been slick… Tasting bile in her mouth, Bri scanned the room for a waste bin but couldn’t find one. “It was horrifying,” she mumbled.

“I think we can both agree he’s not the full shilling.” Anne coughed. “But enough of that cheery topic. Any ideas what you’re dressing up as for Halloween next week?”

Bri blinked and refocused on her flatmate. “I thought about taking the easy route and just getting cat ears, but as far as I can tell, at least half the girls on our floor are already planning to do the ‘sexy kitty’ thing.”

Anne wagged her eyebrows. “And what is your ‘Mister Project’ dressing as?”

Bri rolled her eyes. At this point it was easier to just play along. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to be a dog on Halloween.”

“Will I get to meet him?” Anne chuckled. She snapped her fingers, eyes lighting up. “Hey, maybe find dog ears and say you’re a ‘sexy puppy’ to match!” she suggested. Her lips curled up in a mischievous smirk. “You can both be my ‘animal familiars’!”

Bri arched an eyebrow at her. “Presumptuous to assume you’ll get to meet him! So since you’re going to be a ‘totally not a witch,’ I’d be your ‘totally not a cat’?”

Anne shrugged. “I’ve seen worse ideas than a Druidess with a pet dog.” She frowned, looking around the deserted library. “Did you hear the city’s imposing a curfew next week?”

“I did,” she acknowledged, nodding seriously. “It only makes sense.”

“Maybe… Still, it feels pretty minus craic to have a curfew on Halloween.”

Bri raised an eyebrow dubiously. “Do _you_ want to be out late on Halloween with a serial-killing rapist on the loose?”

Anne shrugged. “Not particularly,” she admitted, “but I kinda think it adds to the spookiness of the season, don’t you think?”

Bri scoffed, rolling her eyes, and shook her head adamantly. “I enjoy Halloween as much as the next girl–”

“Hence the hair?” teased Anne, eyes drifting up.

“Hence the hair,” Bri agreed, running a hand through her freshly-dyed orange-and-black two-tone hair. “I enjoy Halloween, but the Ripper makes it just a little bit _too_ spooky for my taste.”

Anne nodded slowly, her eyes drifting to the clock above the door. She started. “The library closes in just a couple minutes!” she squealed, slamming her book shut with a puff of dust and dropping it on the stack with the rest of her books. Bri turned off her tablet and stowed it in her bag before standing up and stretching her arms, pushing her back out against the stiffness that had set in from hours of sitting in the same position. Her neck finally popped as she was waiting by the front door for Anne to finish checking out her books at the circulation desk, and she slung her bag over one shoulder. She snorted quietly: it was a definite benefit of Engineering that she didn’t need quite as many books! Once she was finished, Anne crammed the half-dozen thick tomes into her backpack and raised her eyebrows in a question.

As Bri pushed the library’s front door open and led the way out into the darkness and fog, she flicked her wrist to deploy the control for her right bracelet. With a press of a button, the flashlight turned on, illuminating the sidewalk in front of them. The light beam caught and refracted on the thick fog, tracing a straight line through the air. Bri extended the light further away from them, but the further the light went, the more of the light the fog reflected back at them, and the more of its circular beam the fog obscured. Finally she contented herself with shining the light no more than a few meters directly in front of them. Bri resisted the urge to wave her arm too much and set a brisk pace, her eyes constantly roaming over the street in all directions and alert for danger. Anything could be lurking in the darkness around them, and they wouldn’t hear it in the fog. Anne hurried along next to Bri, her eyes darting up and down the sidewalk. The covered archway separating the library buildings appeared out of the darkness in front of them, tall and imposing. Even set on the widest beam, Bri’s light couldn’t show the entire space beneath the arch. The two girls were silent, hardly daring to breathe, until they finally stepped out of the passageway onto Chancery Lane and turned south toward the Strand and home. The only sound they could hear was their own footsteps, muffled by the fog; even the light on Bri’s bracelet couldn’t pierce more than a few meters ahead of them.

Bri finally let out a breath and allowed herself to relax when she could see the faint glow of a streetlight ahead of them through the gloom. “So how _is_ this paper going?” Bri finally asked to break the oppressive silence around them, her voice sounding dull and muffled in her ears. “It’s a prelim for the final term paper, right?”

Anne shrugged. “Better than it was four hours ago, at least. Still not more than halfway done. Probably looking at _another_ all-nighter. But once I write this one, the term paper will be close to half finished.”

“And your topic is something on King’s, right?” Bri couldn’t help a flinch as a car appeared out of the fog coming in their direction, whipped past them on the other side of the street, and vanished just as quickly into the fog.

“Sort of,” Anne confirmed, nodding. “More it’s on the history of London along the Thames; the college just happens to be in the way.”

“Uh huh…” Bri responded absently, her eyes on the street corner directly ahead of them where they would turn.

“The history’s actually pretty fascinating,” Anne continued animatedly. “The city of Londinium was inhabited as far back Roman times. And yet the Romans weren’t the first ones to live in this area; the legend suggests that the reason the Romans built the wall was to protect the city from some mysterious enemy that Roman military might alone couldn’t cow into submission. It’s a savage story!”

Bri snorted before looking both directions and leading the way across the street. She raised her left arm to wipe away the condensation that had accumulated on her brow – whether from the fog or from nervous sweat, she couldn’t tell. “I’m glad _you_ enjoy this ancient history stuff,” she commented. “I prefer things in _this_ century personally.”

“And for that I am exceedingly grateful,” Anne noted, nodding to the bracelet flashlight. “Of course, you know what they say: ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it!’” she raised an eyebrow at Bri meaningfully.

Bri giggled. “You know what _else_ they say, ‘You start off school knowing _nothing_ about _everything_ , and the longer you stay in school, the closer you get to knowing _everything_ about _nothing_!’”

Finally climbing the steps to the front door of the Strand House, Anne pulled out her flat key to let them into the building, and Bri finally turned off her light and returned her bracelet control to its place after checking the power level. She would have to charge it overnight, but it was still okay. Anne unlocked the flat, and Bri followed her inside, dropped her backpack on the sitting room couch, and flopped down next to it. The door slid shut and locked automatically, and the tension she had been feeling ever since they left the library finally evaporated. “It’s good to be home.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Is the soup _always_ this thick, Pup?”

The Hound planted his palm on the edge of a roof and swung over, out into the space above the alleyway separating two blocks. With a quick glance below to check that the alley was deserted, he planted his heels on the building’s wall and pushed off, up and over the alley, to land on the next roof. Rolling to his feet, he continued his frenetic race. A chimney loomed suddenly out of the thick layer of fog hanging over the city, and he spun to the side, narrowly avoiding running straight into it. “Afraid you’ll rust, _mon Fer_?”

Across the city Iron Maiden scoffed into her helmet’s built-in communicator. “Please,” she retorted. “Give me a _little_ more credit than that! I might have something to worry about if I fell in the river, but this pea soup isn’t going to rust anything – stainless steel doesn’t rust, and these heat shielding panels are immune to practically everything terrestrial!”

“I think you mean they’re immune to ‘practically everything terrestrial’ except my _dog_ gone animal magnetism!” His voice sounded oddly muffled by the fog.

The Hound could almost hear her roll her eyes. “I can see why you don’t have a helmet, Pup,” she observed wryly. “I can’t imagine your head would _fit_ in one!”

“You have no idea, my dear,” his mother interjected with a laugh. Her teacup clinked; he could imagine her setting it down next to the computer in their Hero Study before rubbing her forehead. “I’m sorry to say that teaching my son _humility_ has been an almost-18-year-long losing battle!”

“You know, I think I like your _maman_ , Puppy!”

“Is this what patrolling together is going to be like now?” he demanded, trying and failing to keep a trace of amusement out of his voice. His eyes roamed over the city in an effort to find Iron Maiden’s location. The two of them were racing around the city on opposite sides of a wide circuit, searching for any trace of criminal activity. Unfortunately, while his miraculous-enhanced senses caught the occasional hint of her location, either from the sound of her suit’s motor deflecting off the buildings or from her jetpack’s flame cutting through the fog billowing across the city on the light breeze, it was only a fleeting indication. “Me trying to do my job while the two of you _dog_ pile on top of me? I had no idea you could be so _pug_ nacious!”

“Not my fault you make it so easy!” Iron Maiden teased.

“You know, I don’t _have_ to join you on patrols now that we have this new mini-portal system in place,” he grumbled, running across Lambeth Bridge along the top of the railing. A delivery truck appeared out of the fog, nearly blinding him with its headlights. He looked away from the truck momentarily to preserve his eyesight before reaching the end of the bridge. Looping his leash around a streetlight, he swung up onto the closest building’s roof to continue on his way.

Iron Maiden giggled. “Are you telling me you actually have something _better_ to do on a Friday night?”

He paused. “I have a social life,” he defended half-heartedly.

“I’m sure.”

“Actually, perhaps having the mini-portals will _help_ with that social life,” he mused, pausing on a roof’s peak to catch his breath. “Now I don’t need to waste gas whenever I want to _pup_ over to the _pup_ for a pint!”

“Ex _cuse_ me!” His mother sounded scandalized. “There will be no ‘popping over to the pub for a pint’ until you’re 18, young man!”

“That’s only two weeks, Mother!”

“Does that _matter_?” she demanded. “Pegasus did not install those rings so you could use them just to ‘pop over to the pub’!”

“Uh oh,” observed Iron Maiden, amusement in her voice. “Sounds like mommy’s putting her foot down! Does she know about the _last_ time you stopped at a pub?”

“‘Last time’?” his mother asked ominously. “What ‘last time’?”

“I have no idea what she could _paw_ -sibly be talking about,” he replied quickly, peering out through the fog closing in around him. “There _was_ no last time!”

“That’s not what _I_ remember...” Iron Maiden teased in a singsong voice.

“Quiet, woman!” The Hound smirked. “At least I know someone who _is_ old enough to buy beer…”

Iron Maiden scoffed. “Oh, no, you’re _not_ putting me in the middle of this!”

The Hound twisted his head to work out some of the tension, and as he did so a sound of shattering glass cut through the oppressive fog from the street below. Swinging over the roof’s edge, he dropped the two stories into the alley next to that building, bending his knees to absorb the fall. Peeking around the corner he saw a man hunched over a parked sedan, his hand inside the car through the open window. Strolling out into the open without a care in the world, the Hound noticed a broken cobblestone on the ground. “Trouble with the car?” he asked, a dubious edge to his voice.

The man swung around, clutching the edge of the window. He winced on cutting his palm on the broken glass. “What? No; of course not!” the man insisted, his mouth set in a pained grimace.

The Hound stopped less than a meter from him and leaned in close. “Somehow, I find that im- _plaws_ -ible,” he observed, raising an eyebrow. “Call the cops to pick this _mutt_ up,” he muttered into his communicator. Louder he asked, “I assume this _isn’t_ your car?”

“Uh….” The man turned and bolted down the street.

“They always try to run,” the Hound complained, rolling his eyes. By then the man was just a shadowy figure barely visible through the fog.

“Maybe they think they can get away?” suggested Iron Maiden in amusement.

“I mean, _maybe_ they could… but it’s like they forget about the leash.” The Hound flicked out his leash, placing the loop directly in front of the man’s foot. The man stepped through it, and the Hound pulled it taut. The man fell flat on the ground with a yelp, his legs splaying in either direction, and the Hound reeled him back. While the man was still dazed, the Hound zip-tied his hands together before using another zip-tie to attach him to the handle on the inside of the car, his hands suspended over his head.

“The police will arrive at your location in a few minutes,” his mother reported.

“They can take their time,” he answered, smirking. “This loser isn’t going anywhere.” He patted the man on the head. “Now stay here and be a good boy for the nice police officers,” he instructed him, before swinging back up to the roof to continue his patrol circuit. He frowned. “It’s been three days since the Ripper’s last attack,” he pointed out.

Iron Maiden hummed thoughtfully. “At the same time, there _have_ been less people out for him to target. I haven’t seen too many, and my infrared cuts through the fog just fine,” she noted.

“Could the weather be keeping people home?” his mother suggested.

The Hound shrugged. “I suppose it’s _claw_ -sible – that and fear.”

“Speaking of, I do hope the two of you are being careful,” she warned. “I would hate for either of you to get sick in this weather.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Iron Maiden quickly assured her. “My suit is temperature-regulated so I don’t get too hot or cold.”

“You know, _mon Fer_ ,” the Hound observed, his voice dropping to a deeper tone, “if you ever _should_ get cold, I’d be happy to warm you!”

“That _is_ a tempting offer,” began Iron Maiden, pausing for a moment, “but I’d prefer keeping my metal suit on over turning you into a fur coat!” She giggled and cleared her throat. “I don’t think we’re going to see anything more… ready to call it a night, Hound?”

He nodded, though she wasn’t nearby to see it. “I’ll meet you back at your workshop,” he agreed. Slowly he turned to jog down to Trafalgar Square, where he turned onto the Strand. Thanks to the fog, he just barely heard the sound of Iron Maiden’s jetpack as she soared over him, its flame creating a halo in the gloom. He followed her trail through the sky until he was about three blocks from the King’s College campus, where he turned left down a back alleyway. The wind howled along the Strand behind him, the only sound he could hear through the fog that suffocated him like a blanket.

A little ways down he could see a small rectangle of light spilling out into the pitch-black night. As he neared the small shed from which the light originated, he heard a light metallic whirring that abruptly cut out, followed by a low, muttered curse. Finally he stood in the light of the half-open shed door and leaned against the doorframe beside the mini portal ring that Pegasus had installed a week earlier to connect the workshop to the Manor and his dorm room. In the centre of the workshop, facing away from him, was Iron Maiden, her suit opened at the rear. The girl sticking half out of the suit let out a grunt and carefully extracted her second leg, rolling her shoulders and twisting her head to stretch once she was fully on the ground.

“I had no idea it would be _this_ easy to convince you to undress for me!” the Hound observed, smirking.

The girl gasped and spun around in a wide-eyed panic, almost tipping the suit over. She grabbed a wrench off the workbench next to her hand and chucked it at him before her eyes finally focused and her jaw dropped. “God, Mutt, you probably just scared like twenty years off my life!” She glared at him through narrowed eyes, clutching her chest and gasping for breath.

The Hound caught the wrench easily and set it on the end of the workbench. “Easy, Maiden,” he soothed, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. “I really didn’t mean to startle you like that.”

She gave him a reproachful look and folded her arms. “I suppose it’s okay,” she finally answered, though without so much as a smile. She shook her head ruefully. “I designed this thing to be easy to get into and out of, but sometimes the gears just stick – probably humidity. And when that happens… I’ve worn _dresses_ that weren’t as complicated to remove as this suit!”

The Hound blinked, envisioning his partner in a mini-dress – black of course to match her Halloween-coloured hair, and short enough to leave most of her legs exposed, toned as they were from running around the city while operating her suit. The neckline dipped low, drawing the eye downward. Although at the moment she was wearing a simple blouse and had a smudge of grease on her forehead, she _was_ attractive. The way she folded her arms across her chest…

“Hound?” Her question brought him back to the present. He blinked and refocused on her face. The look she wore was a mixture between concerned and annoyed.

“Sorry, what?” he asked dumbly.

She rolled her eyes and turned to inspect her suit, kneeling next to it and running a finger across the knee joint, humming to herself. “That really _was_ a wet fog…” she muttered, her mouth twisted up in a frown.

The Hound wagged his eyebrows. “Oh, talk dirty to me!”

The girl looked up at in him confusion, but her eyes quickly took on a mischievous glint. Slowly she rose and sashayed across the small workshop toward him. As she moved, he couldn’t help his eyes being drawn down to her swaying hips. “So you want _dirty_ , do you?” she purred, stopping directly in front of him and looking at him with lidded eyes.

He coughed, his mouth suddenly very dry.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, not breaking eye contact–

and tossed a greasy rag into his face. “Here you go,” she told him, smirking. “My suit needs all the condensation wiped off, and then all the joints need a new coating of oil after tonight.”

The Hound’s jaw dropped open in shock, and he stared at her completely transformed expression without comprehension. Finally his eyes trailed down to the cloth in his hand and then to the suit. “Um…” he began awkwardly, backing away until his back pressed up against the portal ring. “I just remembered I have to pick up a thing for tomorrow – the guys would be disappointed if I didn’t get the… thing.”

Iron Maiden laughed and arched an eyebrow at him as the ring whirred to life. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… this chapter carries a serious trigger warning for a very intense (or at least for me) scene.

Almost half an hour later, once she had applied a new layer of oil to all of her suit’s joints, returned her oil and rag to their places, and wiped off her hands, Bri grabbed her light jacket off the peg next to the door, stepped outside into the cool October air, and wrapped her jacket close around her against the chill. A tap of her bracelet and the workshop door slid shut behind her, the lights turning off and leaving her with little illumination beyond the distant streetlight at the end of the block, barely visible as a pinprick of light haloed in the smothering fog. It rolled around, covering her and hiding the buildings on either side of the alley, muffling her footsteps. The only sound she could hear was that of the wind blowing lightly down the alley into her face. A shiver ran down her spine, and she hit a control on her right bracelet to turn on the flashlight, casting a narrow beam of bright white light on the ground in front of her feet, cutting a trail through the fog.

It was less than a block from her workshop to the Strand, and only three blocks from there to campus, a route she had walked almost every day – sometimes twice a day – since she arrived in London near the beginning of the summer. When she had decided to build her suit, she had wanted somewhere convenient to the campus but out of the way, and the older couple who owned this house had been more than happy to allow the young Engineering student to store her “motorcycle” in the old shed abutting on the back alley, no questions asked, and ignore the loud music and banging. Since then she had practically memorized every meter of the route, knew who would be out when, and how to avoid notice. This late at night, she never ran into anyone.

She jerked her head up and tilted it to the side in surprise. Something had disturbed the gravel somewhere behind her, the sound barely audible through the oppressive fog. “Hello?” she called, turning her head slightly. The alley was obscured by shadows and clouds, the darkness behind her impenetrable. She shrugged and continued walking, though she picked up her pace slightly. The Strand was less than a block away.

Soft footfalls on the pavement behind her. “This had better not be another stupid joke, Pup,” she growled. No response. Instead the footsteps accelerated, drawing closer. Closer, closer, the sound came, heavy and solid. Eyes widening in fear, Bri broke into a sprint, racing down the alley past darkened houses. The Strand was just barely visible through the fog, the corner streetlamp’s light haloed by a wreath of mist. Footsteps pounded behind her, and Bri flicked her left wrist, palming that bracelet’s control. She started to turn, started to bring her bracelet to bear on whoever it was, and something slammed into her side, driving her down into the rough alley surface, scraping her arm on the gravel and tearing her jacket sleeve, pushing pebbles into the side of her elbow. The back of her head hit the ground, and stars flashed in her eyes.

The scene around her was cast into long shadows by the dim light from the streetlamp at the end of the block, sitting mere meters away as a hint of the safety to which she had been tantalizingly close. The light barely pierced through the gloom, but by it Bri could just make out a wild face with slate-grey eyes and a tangled mane of brown hair. He shifted into a kneeling position, straddling her hips and pressing her thighs down with his feet, one hand finding her throat. Bri turned her right arm and bent her elbow, bringing the flashlight on her bracelet to bear on him, and he flinched away from the light, clenched his eyes shut, and hissed. Before she could deploy her energy pistol, however, he grabbed her wrist around the bracelet, covering the light, and slammed it into the ground, hard. The touch screen shattered against the gravel, and the light flickered and died. Bri swung her other arm at his head, aiming to hit him with her undamaged bracelet, but he caught her wrist with his other hand and brought her hands together over her head, pushing them into the ground hard with one of his own. The gravel bit into the backs of her hands. She struggled and squirmed to free her wrists from his tight grip, but to no avail. His unkempt nails bit into the soft flesh of her wrists, leaving crescent marks in her skin.

The Ripper leaned in close, his face mere centimetres from her own, and leered down at her. Her breath caught in her throat on staring wide-eyed up into the face of death. His rancid breath assaulted her nostrils and burned her throat, and she almost gagged. Her arms still pinned above her head, Bri glared up at him, her eyelids narrowed to slits, and she drove her head forward, aiming to smack him in the nose with her forehead. The Ripper leaned to one side to avoid her attack, put his free hand over her mouth and nose, and slammed her head back into the pavement once more, harder this time. She gnashed her teeth at him in fury. “A fighter!” he hissed maliciously, leaning forward, eyes alight with cruelty. “I haven’t had one of those in a while! I think we will… _enjoy_ this.” He ran his tongue up her face. “The more you struggle, the more… _fun_ we can have… before your final release…”

Bri blinked away the spots in her vision and bit back a whimper. A jolt of pain shot through her body. Her eyes refocused just in time to catch a glimpse of his crooked teeth before he bit her cheek, drawing blood. She couldn’t stifle the pained cry that elicited. As her lips parted his rancid breath invaded her mouth, leaving an acrid taste on her tongue. She squirmed against the body pressing down on top of her, but couldn’t break his steel grip. She coughed in his face, the only resistance she could offer. Never before had she felt so weak, so helpless. She tried to find words of defiance, but every sound died in her throat.

“Now,” the Ripper whispered hoarsely, “you are mine!” He drew a knife from his pocket and placed the blade against her chin, pushing her head back until she was staring straight up into his eyes. She tried to turn away, but the knife tip pricked her cheek as he forced her to look back at him. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for a swift end, but he pressed the knife’s tip into the soft skin under her chin, and her eyes flew open once more. “You are _mine_ now.” His dead, unpitying eyes filled her vision. “I will have you now… and always.” He turned the knife in his hand. “You will _always_ be in my power.” He slid the knife down under the collar of her blouse and cut.

Bri gasped in shock as the cool air hit her exposed skin. The Ripper’s razor-sharp knife sliced clean through her jacket, shirt, and bra. The torn fabric flapped open in the slight breeze. She squirmed, flattening her stomach away from the blade as the knife slipped lower, tracing a thin hot line down the centre of her chest and across her stomach, only stopping when the blade stuck in the waistband of her jeans. She strained her arms against his firm grip, but he would not budge. Her shirt in tatters and chest uncovered, he drew the knife tip lazily back up her chest before laying the flat of the blade along her collarbone. A jolt coursed through her as the cold metal touched her bare skin.

Finally she found her voice. “N–no, p–please!” she begged, wide-eyed, staring up into the man’s strangely-emotionless eyes. She pulled her arms against his iron grip, but more weakly. “Please, don’t hurt me!”

The knife tip traced down and around the right side of her chest, cutting a fine line through the top layer of skin, before he did the same on the left. Bri closed her eyes, panting heavily but trying not to move her chest too much as he cut again and again, leaving behind tiny slits that only barely started to weep blood. Then one around the left side pierced deeper, and she gasped, writhing under him to escape the blade’s bite. Again the knife bit deeper, sharper, lower on her torso now. Looking down she could see a thin stream of blood pooling around the left side of her abdomen. His eyes roamed greedily down her blood-streaked chest. “You will serve me well for tonight.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Stop! _Please_! I–I’m begging you!” she whimpered. “Or–or just get it over with already!”

“You do not get to decide the when and how,” he whispered, placing the knife tip in her navel and leaning in close, pushing down on the knife’s handle so it poked through the sensitive skin, drawing blood. “ _I_ am in control. And I will take my time with you while you remain in this mortal form, until I help you to cross over. But the things I will do with you once I have released you from this shell…” He leered at her, licking his lips.

Bri squeezed her eyes shut tight as he continued cutting her chest, deeper now. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying out, from giving him the one thing he seemed to desire. She was going to die. The knife bit deeper into her chest. She was a superhero, and she was going to be raped and murdered in a dark alley – and at this moment she would _welcome_ death! She thought about the woman she had found earlier this week, cut open, blood and other fluids coating her eviscerated abdomen. Tonight, that would be her. Would the Hound be the one to find her? What would he say? What would he do? What about her parents? The blade tip was removed from her chest, and the Ripper whispered something she didn’t understand. A jolt started in her hand and shot down through her arms.

Her arms!

Bri’s eyes shot wide open. The Ripper held the knife above his head, the point aimed straight down at the centre of her chest, his wild hair moving in the light breeze. His mouth was open, his eyes pointed up into the fog-filled sky. And another jolt of electricity from her damaged bracelet zapped her as the shorting wires touched her wrist.

Bri screamed.

Finally finding her courage with the ear-piercing shriek, her eyes narrowed in a defiant glare, Bri bucked, drawing her legs up to her butt for leverage and pushing against the Ripper’s waist where he straddled her. She squirmed her arms against his one-handed grip, wrestling to free her wrists from where he held them above her head. His face changed to shock, eyes widening. His grip on her wrists eased fractionally. It was exactly what she was waiting for.

Pulling her right wrist out of his grip, Bri swung her arm up at his face. He leaned back to avoid it, but he was too close, still trying to keep her other wrist pinned. The top edge of her bracelet struck him in the cheek. The two shorting wires touched his skin, and he yelped in surprise, releasing his hold on her other hand. Bri punched him with her now-freed left hand, even as she kept the damaged right bracelet in contact with his skin. Electricity arced into his cheek, and he flinched. Finally she bucked him off of her and he fell backward to the ground, losing his knife in the process. He scrambled backward away from her in a crabwalk. She rolled onto her front and sprang up even as he found his feet and raced away. Bri raised her undamaged left bracelet, aimed to wrap up his feet, and pressed the button.

The pavement just behind the Ripper’s receding form melted as she hit the energy pistol trigger instead of the grappling hook. The Ripper turned the corner and disappeared down the Strand.

Bri stood frozen in place for a long moment, blinking furiously against the ringing in her head, staring at the spot where the Ripper had vanished. She took a shaky, gasping breath, her arm still pointing at the corner around which he had fled. What if he returned to finish the job? She heard footsteps behind her and spun around, letting off a wild energy blast and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Whoa! Friendly fire!” The Hound’s face appeared through the fog.

Bri stared at him for a moment before placing her hand against her side. It came away red. She collapsed forward.


	4. Chapter 4

The Hound got a quick glimpse of Iron Maiden’s tattered clothing and dishevelled appearance, her shredded shirt blowing apart in the wind, before her knees buckled and she collapsed forward. He gasped and lunged toward her, diving across the few meters separating them to reach her side before she hit the ground. He caught her in his arms as her knees landed on the loose stones, and she grabbed the front of his suit in an iron grip, holding on for dear life. She buried her face in his chest, and a sob escaped her throat. The Hound awkwardly wrapped his arms around her, holding her to his chest protectively. “Hey, you’re okay now,” he soothed. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

Her grip on his suit tightened and she pressed her face further into his collarbone. Her bare skin felt warm against his chest, with only his miraculous suit separating them. He grimaced and scanned the alley in both directions for any sign of her attacker. Something felt sticky against his suit; a coppery scent hung in the air, far too noticeable with his miraculous-enhanced senses. The Hound slipped his hand down to her waist, and it came away red with blood. Her body quivered – whether with the cold, the blood, or the trauma he couldn’t tell.

“Damn.” The Hound eased them down to the ground without releasing his hold on her, shifted to sit with his legs crossed, settled her against his chest across his lap, and de-transformed. He felt her clench her eyes tightly shut and bury her face in his shirt as the tan light washed over him and Barkk appeared next to his head. “Shh,” he soothed her, rocking her gently from side to side.

“What–?” Barkk yelped, staring down at the scene in shock, unable to take her eyes off of Iron Maiden. The Kwami’s mouth fell open in horror, whining softly.

“Someone attacked her,” Felix reported briskly. “I need you to keep watch.” The Kwami nodded, her mouth quivering, but sat down on Felix’s shoulder, turning this way and that, alert for any dangers. A low growl emanated from her throat. Felix released his hold on Iron Maiden with one hand and squirmed his arm out of one of his jacket sleeves. She shivered, her grip on his front tightening. He quickly returned his hand to Iron Maiden’s back and repeated the sequence with his other arm to fully remove his jacket. Wrapping it around her shoulders, he whispered, “Hey, you’re okay, _mon Fer_. I swear, I won’t let anyone hurt you anymore.”

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged tightly, her sobs muffled by Felix’s shirt. The warmth of her body pressed up against his brought heat to his cheeks. She was certainly an attractive girl – and he hadn’t had a girlfriend since before Tibet. His gaze drifted down to her uncovered collarbone, the top of her exposed chest just visible where it pressed against his shirt – but he shook his head. This wasn’t the time or place for that. He could feel something warm seeping through the front of his shirt and sticking to his own chest: blood. Gently Felix shifted his arms to ease her away from his body and inspect the injuries on her chest.

The girl hugged him tightly, her eyes clenched shut, and refused to let go.

“Hey, everything’s okay now,” he whispered, moving his hand in small, soothing circles on her back over his jacket. “But you’re bleeding and I need to see how serious your injuries are. I promise, that’s all I’m going to do.”

Slowly, she eased her death-grip on his shirt and leaned away from him the slightest bit, grabbing the sides of his coat and holding it around herself, her eyes clenched shut and mouth twisted in pain. Felix stifled a gasp. Her entire chest from collarbone to waist was covered in a patchwork of cuts of varying lengths and depths, with blood still trickling from many of them and coating her chest in a thin, sticky sheen. But by far the worst injury was a stab wound in her left side that still bled freely.

“H–Hound?” When she finally spoke, her voice sounded fearful. She hugged the jacket close. Despite the dark colour of the fabric, Felix could make out darker patches in it where it had touched her bloodied chest.

“Nothing to worry about, _cher_ ,” he assured her lightly, shrugging out of his bloodstained button-up shirt and wadding it up into a tight ball. He placed it against the wound in her side and applied pressure. She winced and let out a pained hiss. “I had worse after a particularly nasty rugby match! We’ll get you sorted in no time.” Turning to Barkk he muttered, “Check that she doesn’t have any internal injuries.” The Kwami nodded curtly and phased straight into the girl’s chest.

“What–?” She swallowed. “What was that?”

“Just the ‘Hound behind the Hound,’ _cher_ ,” he explained, his eyes drifting away from the injury to her side and up her bare chest to where the jacket left the centre of her chest slightly exposed before they finally snapped back up to her face. He grinned in embarrassment. “My Kwami, Barkk. She’s checking to make sure we’re looking at everything that’s wrong – other than the bastard who did this, I mean.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, resting her head against his arm, spasms of pain tracing across her forehead. A tiny whimper escaped her lips as he pressed the shirt against her side.

“Do you know who it was?” he asked quietly. Her breathing hitched. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he rushed to add.

“It–it was the Ripper,” she choked out past a sob.

Felix’s heart stopped. He stared wide-eyed at her face, at the terror and pain etched into her features. A face came back to him unbidden.

The words spilled out of her mouth without stopping. “I was on my way back to my room when I heard him behind me. I–I tried to fight –I tried _so_ hard – but he was too strong! I couldn’t do anything! Then I wanted him to just _end_ it already! I’m a goddamn _superhero_ , and this… _monster_ was going to–was going to–” Her chest heaved with sobs and she threw herself back into his embrace, squeezing his chest so tightly he could barely breathe.

“Hey–hey–shh,” Felix soothed, holding her close and gently rubbing her back. He moved one of his hands up to hold the back of her head, and she flinched. A sticky substance in her hair stuck to his hand. Felix glared at the blood sticking to his fingertips and moved his hand away. “He’s gone. _You_ fought him off. You’re alive. You’re safe. You don’t need to be afraid. I’ve got you now.”

“H–how did you know?” she mumbled into his shoulder.

He chuckled quietly. “ _You_ let us know, _mon Fer_ ,” he explained. “When you connected your bracelets into the Heroes of Paris alert system, Pegasus uploaded his emergency program, the same one on all of our phones that will send an automatic alert and location if it went offline under certain circumstances. Turing tried contacting you through the other bracelet, but you didn’t answer. Pegasus wasn’t available to portal someone in, but I was still near the ring in my dorm room, so I’m here.”

“’m glad you’re here,” she murmured into his chest. “Don’ know what’d happen if you didn’ come ’n he came back ’n…”

Felix smirked. “I’m pretty sure if he returned, you would blast him to kingdom come like you almost did to _me_!” he replied wryly.

She hummed weakly as Barkk phased back out of her chest. “All her wounds are superficial but that one,” she squeaked, pointing to the girl’s side. “It’s deep, but at least it only hit muscle.”

Felix nodded, and Barkk flitted down the alley into the fog, darting around them in tight circles and barely visible through the mist. Feeling only marginally safer, Felix looked back down at Iron Maiden’s face. Her eyes were closed, her forehead knotted in pain. Blood and dirt mingled on her cheek. As she pulled in a shuddering breath, her grip on his shirt tightened involuntarily. He didn’t know where she actually lived, or how her flatmate would react to him carrying her back in this condition. The nearest hospital was on the college campus, but would she want anyone on campus to see her like this? _He_ sure wouldn’t if the roles were reversed. And what questions might be asked that he _couldn’t_ answer and she wouldn’t _want_ to answer? She should talk to the police, but she wasn’t in any shape to do it now, and he wouldn’t make that call for her – after this he wouldn’t try to force _anything_ on her. He sighed heavily: he didn’t have any other options. His decision made, Felix shifted one of her hands to hold the shirt in place over her wound, slipped his arm under her knees, and lifted her up.

Her eyes opened in surprise, staring up into his face, pain still twisting her features. “What’re you doing, Mutt?” she yelped.

“I’ve got to get you somewhere safe – unless you’d prefer to stay _here_ all night.” He raised an eyebrow.

She shivered and grabbed a bunch of his undershirt with her free hand. “I didn’t realize you could pick me up so easily without your miraculous.”

Felix bit back his first response and told her, “After sparring with you for a few months, you’d be surprised how strong I’ve gotten!”

She nodded and settled her head against his shoulder. His eyes darting up and down the alley, hyper-alert to danger, he whistled for Barkk to return. The Kwami flew just in front of them as Felix quickly carried Iron Maiden back to the workshop. He’d left the door open in his haste; the moment he was through he hit the control on the inside to shut it. Felix shifted his grip on her so he could hold her with one arm and pressed his free palm against the reader on the portal ring before selecting the correct destination. The ring whirred to life, white energy swirling in the centre, and the familiar sight of the “Hero Study” at the Manor appeared through the portal. He stepped through sideways, careful not to hit Iron Maiden’s head or feet against the ring’s frame, as soon as the portal was fully open, and he immediately turned to lay her down gently on the couch opposite the desk with his mother’s computer. The girl shifted slightly as Felix adjusted his jacket to cover her chest better. The blood that had pooled on her stomach trailed down her side beneath the jacket to seep into the upholstery. The door on the far side of the room opened.

“Felix, sweetie, what’s–” His mother gasped in shock, her hand flying to her mouth.

“It was the Ripper,” he told her, unable to turn away from the look of pain and terror on his partner’s face. _He_ had put that there! If he had just stopped the Ripper when he’d had the chance, almost three full months ago… “I–I wasn’t sure where else to bring her.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she answered comfortingly.

“That’s a first,” he muttered darkly to himself. Barkk put her paw on the back of his hand. The girl’s chest rose and fell slowly; from what he could tell she had finally passed out, though whether from pain, blood loss, or adrenaline crash he couldn’t tell for certain. He knelt next to the couch and carefully lifted the jacket to expose her bloodied torso. Most of the cuts had already stopped bleeding, though blood still oozed sluggishly from several, including the deeper cut in her side. Wordlessly his mother pressed a damp cloth into his hand and pointed to her stomach before she started dabbing the girl’s forehead and cheek with a cloth of her own. Barkk flew across the room to collect the first aid kit from the desk drawer, which she placed on the floor next to the couch before withdrawing a pair of tweezers to start picking gravel out of Iron Maiden’s knee. Still holding pressure on the wound to Iron Maiden’s side, Felix sighed and started dabbing at the sticky blood covering her abdomen and caked inside her navel.

This was going to be a long night.


	5. Chapter 5

As she regained consciousness, Bri felt like she was floating, her head detached from her body. Her eyes wouldn’t open. Her arms were heavy, but her forearms were bare – where were her bracelets? She could tell she was lying in a bed, but it was so much softer than anything she was used to. The sheet draped over her was far silkier than her normal bed sheets – but it didn’t quite touch her chest – something else seemed to be in the way. But what had happened last night? Her brain and body seemed entirely disconnected, her body responding sluggishly to any of her brain’s commands. She could feel a light weight near the centre of her chest, just below her chin, and a rhythmic thumping against her collarbone beside that weight. Strangely, one side of her face tingled. Her hand was slow to respond. But with a supreme effort, she lifted her hand to her cheek and started on finding a bandage plastered across her cheek. She touched the inside of her cheek with her tongue and winced as the adhesive pulled. The thumping on her chest stopped, and the weight moved. Finally her eyes opened a crack.

A pair of enormous grey eyes set in a white-and-brown face stared down at her, centimetres from her nose. Its mouth turned up in a wide grin, its eyes lit up, and it licked her nose in excitement, a light, tickly sensation. “Maiden! You’re awake! Oh, I’m so relieved!”

Bri blinked in confusion and cocked her head, swatting the creature away. It flipped around in midair, nimbly avoiding her hand, and dropped down to nuzzle up to her unbandaged cheek, humming happily. “Um…”

The thing smacked its forehead. “Oh, where are my manners?” it squeaked, flitting away to hover above her head so Bri could see it a little better. It was only about ten centimetres tall – most of that its head – and vaguely resembled a dog, complete with floppy ears and a short tail. “My name is Barkk, and I’m the Hound’s Kwami!”

“‘Kwami’… They talked about you before on the Ladyblog, didn’t they?” Bri asked, her brows furrowing with the effort of thought. “You give the miraculous their powers?”

“Got it in one!” Barkk nodded, clapping her paws enthusiastically. Her tail wagged so hard her whole body quivered. “The Hound asked me to stay here and watch over his _Fer_ Maiden to make sure you would be okay through the night. We were so worried when the Hound found you; they will be so relieved to see you awake!”

Bri’s nostrils were filled with the smell of rancid meat. A wild face with tangled hair floated before her eyes. She couldn’t move, her wrists pinned by the preternatural strength. She froze, her eyes wide, pupils dilated.

The Kwami gasped, covering her mouth with her paws. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.” A high-pitched whine came from Barkk’s throat.

Bri clenched her eyes shut and shook her head firmly, forcing herself to inhale slowly through her nose. Her chest felt constricted, like the monster was still on top of her; she couldn’t take in a deep breath. Although her head still felt like she was floating, tiny pinpricks of pain made themselves known at the edges of her consciousness. She sat up in the bed and put a hand on her chest. It was swathed in bandages. “What–?”

“You weren’t bleeding too badly except from a couple of the deeper cuts,” explained Barkk, placing her paw over one of the bandages, her eyes wide and sad. “But there were just so many of them that they needed to wrap you up completely to make sure they got all of them.”

A water glass stood on the nightstand next to her bracelets, and she took a long drink. “My head…” She ran her fingers through her hair but froze on feeling another bandage wrapping the back of her head. She pressed gently on it and winced as a stab of pain shot through her scalp from that spot.

“You didn’t need stitches, but it was bleeding pretty badly.”

Bri nodded and rubbed her eyes, leaning back against the headboard, careful not to put pressure on the back of her head. Her arms still felt sluggish.

“They gave you something for pain and to help you sleep,” Bark told her.

Bri coughed. “I’m sorry, but _who_ did all of this?”

“La Paonne Deux… and the Hound.”

Bri pulled the covers up higher to hide her chest, even though the bandages covered her torso entirely. Her cheeks burned from embarrassment. “So he…”

The Kwami nodded, her ears drooping. She perked up. “They will be so relieved to see you awake! The Hound was moments away from going out to hunt for the Ripper again last night once they finally got you all bandaged up. I don’t think I’ve _ever_ seen him so furious.”

Bri’s breath hitched, her jaw clenched. She could feel his grip on her wrist, hear his voice. Her hand drifted up to her injured cheek. The world around her faded, and instead of lying of a soft bed her back was against the gravel and cobbles of the alley. The Ripper’s legs pinned her to the ground, his body pressed against her–

“Maiden?” The Kwami’s voice cut through the haze of her mind, right next to her ear.

She blinked, and Barkk nuzzled against her uninjured cheek. “Sorry,” she apologized, cupping a hand around the Kwami’s back.

Barkk patted her gently. “No, _I_ ’m sorry. I would be concerned if you _weren’t_ feeling so anxious right now,” she told her. “Do you want something for breakfast? Or do you need to wash up first? You can stay in bed and sleep if you want, too.”

Bri took a shallow, shuddering breath. _I survived. I’m safe. He can’t hurt me._ She clutched the sheet in both hands. _I survived. I’m safe. He can’t hurt me._ Slowly she released her grip and tossed the sheet away, planting her feet on the floor. “Breakfast I think,” she finally answered. “But I’m not about to wear the clothes from…” She swallowed hard.

Barkk giggled and pointed toward the opposite side of the room. “The Hound already thought of that.”

The profusion of colour along the wall almost made Bri’s eyes hurt. The vanity, chair, dresser, and three extra clothing racks were loaded almost to the ceiling with a wide assortment of clothing: shirts and blouses with every cut and neckline imaginable. Skirts, slacks, Capri pants, and shorts. A jacket and even a couple dresses. A handful of bras – everything from a basic sports bra up the laciest ones she had ever seen. All with the tags still on them. Bri picked out a red sweatshirt with black spots and glanced at the label. “‘Agreste’?” The name took her back to lycée, when Agreste clothing had been all the rage among her friends, though she had never been able to afford their prices. Of course, that had been before Hawk Moth was revealed to be Gabriel Agreste and all her friends boycotted his company. But that was over a year ago. With a shrug she picked out a bra, threw on the Ladybug sweatshirt with a pair of sweatpants, shot down a couple painkillers with the water on the nightstand, and allowed the Kwami to lead her down the stairs to the dining room.

The clink of dishes and sound of voices drifting out of the room drew her, and she stopped at the doorway. The Hound sat at the table with a woman who had to be his mother, tall and slender with platinum-blonde hair. She stopped speaking and looked up in surprise on seeing her. “Oh, sweetie, what are you doing up?” She jumped to her feet and rushed around the table. “If you’d sent Barkk down, I would have been happy to bring up a tray for you!” Before Bri knew what was happening, the woman threw her arms around her in a tight embrace.

Bri awkwardly wrapped her arms around the woman and sighed, finally relaxing after the anxiety that had plagued her since she woke up. The woman rubbed her back gently, making soothing noises. Bri closed her eyes, inhaling her flowery perfume. For the first time since she’d been knocked to the ground last night, she finally felt… safe. “Thanks,” she whispered, sniffling. “Um…”

“Call me ‘Amelie,’ sweetie,” she instructed her, putting her hands on Bri’s shoulders and holding her out at arm’s length to examine her, looking critically at the scratches around her face and bandage on her cheek. “My son is Felix. After everything, I think it’s only fair to share that with you.”

Bri nodded, her shoulders dropping. “I–I didn’t realize how much I needed a hug. After…”

Amelie nodded sympathetically. “If you want to go home to see your parents, you can take our other portal ring to the Heroes’ Headquarters and simply walk home from there.”

Bri’s eyes widened nervously. She had never told Amelie who her father was! For as much as she longed to see her mother and feel her warm embrace after last night, what would her father think? Might he figure out how she was able to return home so quickly and unexpectedly? She shot Felix a worried glance, and he frowned.

“It would be rather suspicious if our _Fer_ Maiden just showed up in Paris out of the blue instead of taking the train,” he pointed out.

Amelie hummed in acknowledgement. “That may be true. All the same, we can arrange it for you if you wish, sweetie.”

The tension in Bri’s chest eased and she nodded. “Thank you for the offer,” she replied. “And perhaps I will take you up on it eventually, but not today. Today… I just want to rest.”

“Of course,” Amelie assured her, guiding her to a seat near where she and Felix had been sitting. She placed a plate of croissants in front of Bri and poured her a cup of tea. “If you would like something more – eggs or bacon – I’ll send word down to the chef. Otherwise I’ve given him instructions not to disturb us.”

Bri raised an eyebrow at that information but shook her head, taking a croissant. “I think this will be fine for now.” Biting into the croissant, it melted apart in her mouth and she gasped. “This… this tastes exactly like the ones from my favourite bakery in Paris!”

Felix snorted. “Why does that not surprise me?” he asked rhetorically. “I was in Paris anyways this morning, so I popped over to Tom and Sabine’s,” he explained.

“Was that when you picked up all those clothes?” Bri asked, arching an eyebrow and picking out another pastry.

“Yeah…” Felix ran a hand through his hair, grinning nervously. “I hope you don’t think we just had a ton of clothes in your size lying around the Manor. Or that I even _knew_ your size without looking at the label.”

“You got enough of them,” she observed wryly.

He shrugged. “I know you like wearing metal, but I really haven’t seen you wearing all that much _other_ than that, so I figured you would appreciate some variety from which to choose.” She gave him a dubious look. “My cousin owns a fashion house; he and his fiancée insisted,” he explained.

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Your cousin is Adrien Agreste?” She shook her head ruefully. “That explains so much,” she muttered. Taking another bite she looked up at her hosts curiously. “So what is going on today?”

“That’s entirely up to you,” Felix replied, giving her a sympathetic look. “You can take the portal ring and return to London any time you want – I’ll walk you home if you don’t feel safe doing it on your own – or not if you don’t feel comfortable with me knowing where you live. Otherwise you can stay here with us for the weekend, or for as long as you would like.”

Bri nodded and helped herself to another croissant, letting out a breath to calm her racing heart. “I think I’d like to stay here with you – at least for a little while.”


	6. Chapter 6

“How is the tea, dear?”

“It’s fine.”

“Can I get you something more for breakfast? Eggs? Yogurt?”

“No. Thank you, though.”

“How is your head feeling?”

“It’s still sore, but it doesn’t ache the way it did. I think the painkillers finally kicked in.”

Felix took another sip of his coffee, the bacon and eggs forgotten on his plate. Iron Maiden continued to eat slowly, mechanically, staring at the plate in front of her and its dwindling pile of croissants. With the way she was eating them, he supposed it was good that he had brought back so many. She stopped mid-bite, her hand drifting up to brush her bandaged cheek. The monster had _bitten_ her. Surely that hadn’t been part of his _modus operandi_ months ago when Felix first encountered him, had it?

When he had found Iron Maiden the night before, she had been covered in blood, shivering in the chill air, and he had felt an overwhelming surge of protectiveness toward his friend. When she had told him what had happened, he had expected to feel rage at the monster who had done something like this to his partner. On finding out who the monster was, however, the only emotion he had felt was guilt – a feeling that had yet to go away even now, nearly twelve hours later.

But sitting at the table wasn’t about to change that feeling. He had to _do_ something. He finally downed the last dregs of his now-lukewarm coffee. With a glance at his watch, he let out a resigned sigh, scooped up Barkk, deposited her into his breast pocket, and rose from the table. “I’m going for a run,” he announced to no one in particular.

“Be careful, dear!” his mother called too-cheerfully. Iron Maiden didn’t raise her eyes from the dwindling number of croissants in front of her, though her shoulders tensed. She shrank down into her new sweatshirt, closing herself off.

“Always,” Felix replied emotionlessly.

The moment they were out of the dining room, Barkk flitted back out of his pocket to hover in front of his face, staring at him. “You didn’t think _this_ would happen,” the Kwami pointed out quietly, fixing her large eyes on Felix.

It always shocked him how perceptive she could be. “No, I didn’t,” he agreed bitterly as he made his way to their Hero Study. “So what kind of moron does that make me? I should have _realised_ that something like this would happen if he escaped. I mean, he’s a serial-killing rapist; did I think he would just call it quits and crawl back into his hole, count himself lucky that I hadn’t thrown him in jail and thrown away the key?”

“You were inexperienced,” Barkk reminded him calmly. “You didn’t know what you were doing. _All_ my holders have struggled at times. Do you think the Hound was a war hero right off the bat? He suffered defeats. He lost friends. He had moments when he doubted. He almost gave up right at the outset of the Blitz when his fiancée was killed by a collapsing building.”

Felix placed his thumb on the door-mounted reader and the lock clicked open. A settee sat against the far wall alongside the desk with his mother’s computer and a police radio. A street map of London and the surrounding area covered half the wall. The wall opposite the map held two portal rings. The larger of the two connected to the main Heroes of Paris portal network and would take him to their Headquarters. The smaller and newer portal ring was paired with the collapsing ring in Felix’s Eton dorm room and the ring in Iron Maiden’s workshop – Pegasus’ first trial run of rings without a single hub. An empty space showed where the couch had been, though they had removed it last night after it had gotten stained with Iron Maiden’s blood.

Felix’s mouth set in a thin line. He could still see the rivulets of blood running down Iron Maiden’s sides, pooling in the cushions. With each cut that his mother had bandaged, it seemed that another one had made itself known. The wound on the back of Iron Maiden’s head had gotten stuck to the pillow before they realized it was even there. It had taken time to peel it off so they could bandage her scalp. The cuts around her chest had drawn his attention over and over with how precise they appeared – not random, but intentional. But why? It was yet another mystery to pair with all the others surrounding this monster. Felix placed his hand on the palm reader next to the smaller ring and selected his destination. The portal activated, and Felix stepped through into Iron Maiden’s workshop.

The sunlight filtering through the window near the ceiling revealed a pristine working surface, all of the tools hung in their designated spots on the corkboard behind the workbench. The Iron Maiden suit in the middle of the room gleamed brightly in the light. Barkk hid in Felix’s pocket as he unlocked the side door and slipped out. The alleyway was deserted as he made his way down to the Strand. At the sight of the small patch of blood in the centre of the alley, meters from the Strand, his stomach turned over and he clenched his jaw in anger. The edge of the alley was unpaved, so he kicked some gravel over the bloodstain to hide it. With that out of the way, he stepped around the pockmark where Iron Maiden had melted the pavement and merged into the midmorning foot traffic.

Partway down the street he came to a newsstand and, on a whim, stopped to look at the headlines. He was just about to walk away when a headline near the fold on the Times caught his interest. “‘Ripper attack’?”

The vendor gave him a surprised look. “Oh, yeah, happened last night, and a brutal thing it was, too. Girl from one of the colleges; poor thing was barely recognisable after the monster was through with her. Happened a few blocks from here, down by the river.”

“Damn,” Felix muttered, tossing a couple coins to the vendor and taking the paper. Stepping out of the way of the passersby, he leaned against the newsstand, flicked the paper open, and proceeded to read. Sure enough, there was a picture of a girl with sandy blonde hair just below the fold – a recent picture from her social media; according to the caption the police had refused to share any crime scene photos because of the grisly nature of the attack. But according to an eyewitness the reporter revelled in quoting, the girl’s face had been caved in, her chest cut open, and her breasts entirely removed. Felix hurriedly skimmed the rest of the article, his eyes widening and jaw falling open in horror as he read, before he crumpled the newspaper in one fist. His walk entirely forgotten, Felix raced pell-mell back down the alley to the workshop, nearly skidding on new the gravel patch he had created. In moments he was back at the Manor and rocketing up the stairs to his own room.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Barkk, phasing out of his pocket and flying full-out next to him to keep up.

“Fuck me!” Felix cursed as he grabbed his tablet and pulled a notebook out of a desk drawer. “Has the Ripper _ever_ made two attacks in a night before?” he demanded.

The Kwami furrowed her brows and tapped her chin with one paw before shaking her head. “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “But normally his attacks are successful.”

“But not always,” Felix pointed out, opening the program that Iron Maiden had written months ago to track Stripper Ripper attacks. The opening image was a map of London covered in red dots to show the locations of his attacks. They still hadn’t figured out a pattern to the attacks; while the first several had happened in Whitechapel, the Ripper had quickly expanded beyond the original Jack the Ripper’s hunting ground to target London as a whole. Even the clusters of attacks within the same neighbourhood couldn’t give them a pattern; as often as not those attacks were weeks apart, separated by other attacks in other districts. Every time he had thought he might be onto something, an outlier had appeared. And despite the Heroes of Paris’ police contact having convinced the London Police Department to give them access to all of the police’s information on the Ripper, they were no closer to finding a pattern.

Not until now.

Felix switched the view to a table with the chronological list of Ripper attacks. They had begun slow, separated by several weeks, before the first time he had made two attacks in a week. Then he had gone to ground for two weeks before resuming his attacks. He tapped on the third attack, one that the police had kept out of the papers. “See this one?” he asked Barkk, making a notation in his notebook. “Rose Kelly was attacked leaving a club by an unknown assailant matching the Ripper’s description, but she escaped when a club patron stepped into the alleyway to take a piss.” He went back to the other list. “But the next attack didn’t happen until three days later.”

“Maybe that attack wasn’t the Ripper,” pointed out Barkk, raising an eyebrow. “It could have just been mixed in with the others by coincidence.”

“Maybe,” Felix mused, scrolling down further and making a few more notes. “But the Fay Millwood attack was absolutely the Ripper. And the next Ripper attack didn’t happen until two weeks later.”

“You did sprain his ankle that night,” Barkk noted. “He probably wasn’t in any shape to make another attack.”

“But from what our Maiden said, she gave the Ripper a hell of a fight to drive him away last night, too, every bit as severe as anything _we_ did to him,” Felix argued. “He can’t have been in a very good shape to carry out another attack so soon after Iron Maiden zapped him. Yet he still went out and found another victim.” Felix sighed heavily. “Something about making a successful attack _last night_ was important to him.”

After another two hours of searching, checking and rechecking his information, Felix finally had what he was looking for. His jaw set in distaste, he grabbed his now-full notebook and trudged down the stairs. He found his mother sitting in the main sitting room off the entryway and reading a book. She looked up and smiled when he entered, though with some strain around her lips. She set her book aside and clasped her hands in her lap. “What’s wrong, dear?”

He looked around the room in some surprise. “Where is Iron Maiden?”

“She went back to bed after you left,” his mother explained. “I thought it best to let her rest for as long as she needs.”

Felix nodded, sighing heavily. “Probably wise… with what I found.”

Her eyes widened. “What did you find?”

“There’s a pattern,” he explained, the words leaving a sour taste in his mouth. Just saying them out loud made the reality of his failure more present, more real. “Not for the earlier attacks,” he added quickly. “Or at least not that I can find. It’s just the recent ones, starting about six weeks ago. Between the times and the locations, he has adopted a definite pattern now.” He placed the notebook on the table and opened it to a map he’d sketched out. “Before then he was attacking once or twice a week. He raped the victim, killed her, and then eviscerated her post-mortem. Since then, however his attacks have changed. He still carries out the same actions, but in the opposite order. The attacks have become more regular, two to four days apart. The location has narrowed down: they’ve all been in the same area, either in the City of London west of St. Paul’s or within a kilometre or so west of Chancery. The alley where I found Iron Maiden last night was almost the farthest west that he’s struck in that time frame.”

“Are you certain of this?” his mother wondered, furrowing her brows suspiciously. “How could the police have missed a pattern like this?”

Felix closed his eyes. “Because we’ve all been considering every attack _together_ , not looking for a _change_ in his pattern. As far as the police are concerned, nothing really changed: he went on a spree for a few weeks, took a few weeks off, and picked up again where he’d left off, only with even greater brutality. He’s gone this long in a particular area before moving on in the past, so why make note of it when each one could be his last in this area? They had no reason to think his _modus operandi_ had changed, or that there was a specific cause _for_ the change.”

His mother cocked her head in confusion.

“His last hiatus coincided with the last time he had a failed attack,” he explained bitterly. “It was only _after_ I fought him and allowed him to escape that he changed tactics. That was when he became so much more brutal, when his area narrowed down, all of it. It’s all _my_ fault. Because I went to fight Mecha-Man instead of finishing the job with the Ripper.”

A gasp came from the doorway behind him. Felix spun around to find Iron Maiden staring at him in wide-eyed shock.


	7. Chapter 7

Bri’s eyes took on a hard set as she stormed off through the Manor tracing the path to the Hero Study that Amelie had shown her after breakfast, Felix’s words echoing in her ears. “It’s all my fault,” he had said. He had allowed the Ripper to escape, and it was only after that incident that the Ripper had escalated! _That_ was why he had been free to attack her last night! She glowered at the floor and almost walked headlong into the door of the study before she remembered to scan her thumb. To think that she sometimes looked back on the day she had first met the Hound _fondly_! Despite the poor circumstances of their initial meetings, he had grown on her and become only her second real friend since arriving in London. The first person in whom she had ever felt safe confiding her father’s misdeeds – something she hadn’t even told _Anne_ about yet. But if she had known _then_ what she knew _now_ , maybe she _would_ have punched him across the Thames! Maybe she _would_ have dropped him in the river! Maybe she would _not_ have agreed to this stupid partnership with the dumbass who had allowed a rapist go free.

The portal whirred to life and she jumped through just as the door behind her burst open. She was through the portal before he could catch her, and tossed her damaged bracelet carelessly on the workbench before throwing the workshop door open and practically running outside. She could hear Felix’s footsteps behind her as he closed the workshop door and hurried to catch up.

“Maiden! Wait!”

“I don’t want to hear it, Mutt!” she shouted without turning around or slacking her pace.

“Let me explain!” he begged, an anxious edge to his voice.

“How can you _possibly_ explain away that it’s your fault that the Ripper has been on the loose for the last two months?” she demanded, her voice dropping to an ominous level. “Are you going to say I don’t understand? That I didn’t hear correctly? Because I know what I heard.”

“No,” he answered heavily. “You heard right. I could have stopped him. I know I made a mistake! I know it’s my fault! I’m sorry!”

“I don’t care!” She clenched her fists and continued walking, despite the footsteps behind her. “Do you have any idea what I went through last night!?! Do you have any idea what I felt – the helplessness, the terror, the _pain_? Do you have any idea what I _begged him to do just to make it stop!?!_ I told him to just kill me already! Do you know what that _feels_ like? And now I find out _you_ had a chance to stop it _weeks_ ago and you didn’t! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I know!” Felix confessed, a hitch in his voice. “I should have stopped him right then. I should have punched his head off his neck, thrown it in the Thames, and held it down until the bubbles stopped. And I didn’t. Because I was an ass. But I'm not the same guy who made that mistake anymore! I would never allow him to hurt someone else again! I would never let someone hurt _you_ again! And I swear to you, I will do everything I possibly can to stop him!”

“Do you think that _matters_!?!” she demanded, finally turning around and glaring at him, one finger pointed accusingly at his face. He stared back wide-eyed, hands in front of his chest, palms facing her, his lower lip trembling. “I don’t care that you’re ‘different’ now! I don’t care that you want to stop him _now_! None of that changes last night! None of that changes what he did – what he _has_ done! Not just to me, but to _all_ the women he’s killed since then. So right now, I never want to see you again. Now I’m going home, and don’t you _dare_ follow me!” She turned around and stalked away, fists trembling at her sides.

“As you wish, Iron Maiden,” Felix whispered behind her.

The footsteps behind her faded away as Bri turned left onto the Strand and made her way down the three blocks to her apartment building, pushed against the crowd on the sidewalk, most of whom were probably on their way to the pubs for lunch. She could feel eyes on her from behind, but when she turned around and looked no one was watching her. The rooftops appeared deserted. The crowds on the street paid her no mind. Even after watching for several minutes, nothing. Finally she stopped in front of the apartment building, withdrew the keys from her new jeans, and let herself in. The apartment was empty and silent. For the first time since she had woken up that morning, she was truly alone. Barkk had been there when she woke up; Amelie had sat with her through breakfast and helped her change the bandages afterward. When she had gone down to the sitting room, she had been looking for their company. But now? She was on her own. The last time that had been the case, the Ripper had appeared.

Bri tossed her keys in the dish on the counter next to Anne’s potted fern, walked through the living room and down the hallway to her bedroom, and flopped down on the bed. Then the tears finally started flowing freely.

She could have died – she _should_ have died in that bleak alley last night! She gave up, stopped struggling against him! She was a superhero, and she had been ready to just give in and let him do what he was going to do and then murder her, just to make the pain stop. In that moment she had started to check out, to give in to the pain and just pray that her end would come quickly. How could she pretend to be a superhero now? She had failed to stop her father and his partner in August; she had failed to stop the Ripper – or even to protect herself from being attacked – last night. Hell, she had even put herself in that position, walking alone late at night! And she hadn’t survived because she was good or strong or determined; she had survived because she had been lucky.

The tears fell fast and furious. Snot pooled in the bedcover directly below her nose. She could still smell the Ripper’s rank breath invading her nostrils. She could still see his wild hair blowing in the breeze, hear his raspy voice in her ears. She would probably still be able to hear him perfectly clearly in sixty or seventy years, lying on her deathbed. She might be haunted by his face forever. That smell would be burned into her memory, heedless of the passage of time.

“It’s all my fault,” the Hound had said. But it really _wasn’t_ , was it? Sure, she had thought he was an arrogant, self-absorbed jackass when they first met. Yes, he had _been_ an arrogant, self-absorbed asshole then. But in the privacy of her own mind she could admit that he was different now than he had been just two months ago. He cared about others – about _her_ – in a way that he hadn’t then. Maybe he had had an opportunity to arrest the Ripper and had passed on it; that didn’t mean _he_ was directly responsible for her near-murder last night. He was just the closest target for her anger.

Not that she would ever tell _him_ that.

As her sobs finally quieted, the apartment lock clicked and the door slid open. “Bri?” Anne’s voice drifted down the hall from the entryway. “Are you here, girl?” Jingling. A muttered, “Her keys are here…”

Bri sniffled.

Footsteps just outside her door. “Bri!” The bed sagged slightly as Anne sat down next to her. “Gods, girl, you scared me to death!” Gentle fingers touched the edge of the bandage over her head before they were immediately withdrawn. “But what happened here?” Bri rolled over to find Anne staring down at her worried. Anne’s eyes widened and she gasped, examining Bri’s face closely before looking lower at the tops of the bandages around her torso left visible by her blouse’s neckline. She cocked her head in bewilderment. “You’re a complete haymes! What happened!?!”

Bri shook her head and threw her arms around Anne’s waist in a tight hug. Anne awkwardly patted her on the back, and Bri started to relax.

“You had me worried sick!” Anne commented. “You weren’t back last night – okay, not _that_ unusual – but this morning your door was open and it didn’t look like you’d come back at all… And with the Ripper on the loose, I thought – well.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I tried calling, but you weren’t answering. So I went down to the station to report you missing, but the bloody peelers wouldn’t even give me the time of day – said they couldn’t do anything without ‘proof’, and my say-so wasn’t enough for them. I told them I knew you wouldn’t just run off without something being wrong, but they said you probably just met some guy and went back to his place! How thick could they be! I told them I was worried the Ripper had gotten you–” Bri’s breath hitched “–but they said that couldn’t be the case: the Ripper killed _another_ girl last night. Mary Jane Wilkins who lives over at Stamford Street, can you believe it?”

“Anne,” Bri interrupted softly. Her voice trembled. Anne fell silent instantly. “He _did_ attack me last night.”

“ _Who_ did?”

Bri looked up at her, her eyes wide, her lower lip quivering. “Who do you think?”

Anne gasped and covered her mouth with both hands, staring at Bri in horror. “Tell me you’re codding me!”

Bri shook her head and carefully peeled the bandage off her cheek, revealing the scabbed-over bite mark the Ripper had left behind. “I’m absolutely serious.”

Anne hugged her tight. “Oh, my god! How did you _survive_!?!”

She shrugged and relaxed into the embrace. “I… fought back.” She closed her eyes. “He was so strong… I didn’t think I would survive. I thought he was going to kill me! I just–”

“Hey! Shhh…” Anne soothed, rubbing circles in her back. “You’re alive, and that’s the important thing.”

 _Is it really?_ Bri scoffed, though she didn’t say anything aloud. It would only worry her.

“But where have you been all this time?” Anne leaned back to examine her more critically. “And what are you _wearing_?”

Bri shrugged, not bothering to look down at the mottled brown blouse she had selected from the pile in the bedroom at the Manor after showering. At the time she had picked it because the colour scheme reminded her of her partner, who had been there when she needed him last night; now she wished she had chosen _anything_ else. “A friend found me after–after it happened,” she explained quietly. “They brought me home and patched me up. That’s where the clothes came from, too.” She sighed. “I’m sorry for not calling–especially with how on edge we’ve all been lately.”

“And I think it’s only going to get worse after last night.” Anne exhaled heavily.

Bri tensed. “Mary Jane was the other victim last night?”

“They found her this morning,” Anne confirmed. “The police wouldn’t tell me anything about it except her name. But it’s been all over ResiLife. Apparently she was just on her way back to the house when it happened. They’re organizing a vigil for her later today – both campuses are invited.”

“I don’t–” Bri swallowed, biting back a sob.

Anne rubbed her back comfortingly. “You don’t have to go.”

“I don’t want to be alone…” Bri whispered, clenching her eyes shut.

“I won’t leave you alone,” Anne assured her. She squeezed her tightly. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”


	8. Chapter 8

Two nights later, on Sunday evening, Felix activated the portal to Iron Maiden’s workshop just after eleven and jumped through, Barkk hovering by his head. He had spent all weekend holed up in his room poring over all the information they had on the Ripper, though without any new insights – not that he could handle any more bombshell realizations like the last one. The weather had taken a turn yesterday, with the fog giving way to an intense rain that beat on the roof tiles in a sharp staccato and poured down in sheets. The rain had not let up for over a day, leaving Felix in a foul mood. The only silver lining to the rain was that, over the entire course of his reign of terror, the Ripper had shown himself to be hesitant to strike during rainstorms. That, coupled with his attack on Iron Maiden and the other girl the night before, had left Felix reasonably certain that Saturday would be free of Ripper activity.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t be so certain about Sunday.

The rain had cleared just after suppertime, though the clouds remained, hanging thick over the city and cutting out any light from the stars or moon. Felix stepped carefully around a puddle outside the workshop and jogged a few blocks north, away from the Strand.

“What’s the plan tonight?” asked Barkk, munching on a strip of dried beef, her head poking out of Felix’s jacket pocket.

He scoffed dourly. “Find the goddamn Ripper. Rip out his goddamn throat.”

“I can get behind that,” Barkk agreed, polishing off her snack and nodding that she was ready.

Felix transformed, the light leaving spots in his vision after the pitch darkness of the alley. He took a running start and launched himself into the air to land on the roof of the closest building, a single-story house. Running up the angled roof he nearly slipped on the wet tiles, only catching himself at the last minute by looping his leash around the chimney stack. He pulled himself up to the top of the roof, ran straight along the ridge, and jumped to the next building. The city seemed subdued tonight, only a handful of people visible on the streets. The headlights of the few cars on the road cut through the darkness, one of the only sources of illumination available with the low clouds. The Hound looped his leash around a traffic light and swung himself across the street, angling southeast, doubling back toward the Strand to skirt along the outer edge of the area he had identified as the Ripper’s most recent killing ground.

How different from the last time he went out on patrol, when he and Iron Maiden were together, bantering over their communicators and having as much fun as they could under the circumstances. But now he was on his own – and with no one but himself to blame. Even though his mother was always available for support, she was sitting at her desk at the Manor, not right there with him.

“How does it look out there, dear?” his mother asked over the communicator.

“Dark and dreary,” he reported, scrambling up the side of an apartment building just north of the King’s College campus and walking around the edge of the roof, peering out over the city. Apart from a handful of clubs still open in defiance of the new curfew order, the city was dark, not a light to be seen. “But it’s London, so what would you expect?” He frowned. “Even with a smaller area to search, I still haven’t a clue how to find this bastard. Or even how I’m supposed to cover a five-kilometre square all by myself.”

His mother sighed heavily. “Just do the best you can. The Heroes of Paris can’t stop every crime in Paris by themselves, and they have an enormous team from which to draw.”

“And my mistake cost me my teammate,” he finished bitterly, staring off into the distance toward the river barely visible beyond the college buildings.

“You don’t _really_ know that.”

The Hound let out a humourless snort. “We both know I’m right.”

A sigh. “Give her time,” his mother advised sympathetically. “After what she went through…”

“Not exactly helping,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. A flash of light to the east drew the Hound’s eye, a faint yellow glow giving oblique illumination to the clock tower of an imposing stone building along Chancery Lane. However, looking more closely he realized it wasn’t coming from the clock tower itself but from somewhere behind the clock tower. The Hound raced across the apartment building roof and leapt out into space on the north side of the building, tossing his leash behind him to loop around a protrusion from the roof. He dropped about halfway down the building before the leash pulled taut and stopped his descent. With a swing to gain momentum he ran along the wall and jumped off to the next building along the Strand, landing and rolling to his feet without losing momentum. From there he continued east along the rooftops, making his way steadily toward the light. Gothic revival in aesthetic, the roof studded with tall thin towers, the building dwarfed the rest of its block and stood just inside the boundaries of the City of London. The Hound caught his leash around one of the towers, flipped himself up to land on the building’s roof, and picked his way around the clock tower toward the light. Finally he stood at the edge of a glass dome on the east side of the building, staring down at floor upon floor of bookcases lining the walls of a circular room. On the bottommost floor was a single lit desk lamp. No other lights were on in the building. “What is the building I’m standing on?” he asked his mother.

“I believe that’s one of the King’s College libraries,” she answered after a couple minutes of silence.

He frowned. “There’s a light on inside.”

“Just one?” She hummed. “Perhaps someone just forgot to turn it off when they left.”

The Hound hummed. “Probably…” With a sigh he turned away from the dome and looked down into the building’s garden, only to see a man in long dark robes standing there, staring up at him. The man flicked his wrist, and something whistled through the air. The Hound moved his head to the side moments before a cord spun past his neck. A pair of metal balls struck the clock tower behind him and ricocheted off the stone. The Hound caught his leash on the edge of the roof and rode it quickly to the ground, not taking his eyes off of the man’s face.

“Miraculous abuser!” The robed man’s eyes lit up maliciously, his lips curled into a smirk. He withdrew a quarterstaff from his back and twirled it once, letting it rest against the back of his arm.

“I suppose I don’t need to ask what _your_ deal is,” the Hound observed, raising an eyebrow.

His communicator cut in. “Who’s there?” his mother asked. He winced at the distraction.

“I take it you’ve met a Dark Acolyte before.” From close up his robes appeared purple, the colour of dark wine.

“Once or twice.” The Hound spun his leash to one side, sizing up his opponent. “I wasn’t impressed.”

“Call me ‘the Vicar’,” the man told him, dropping into a fighting stance. “Since the Prior has been so ineffectual against the miraculous abusers in Paris, I’ve been dispatched to Europe to… finish what he cannot. And where better to start than with the single miraculous abuser in London?”

The Hound narrowed his eyes darkly. “You may find that to be an im- _paw_ -sible task.”

“We shall see, then, won’t we?” The Vicar strode forward at an easy pace, cutting the distance between them in half.

Once he had stepped off of the grass and onto the cobblestones, the Hound sprang into action. With a yell, he lunged forward, throwing his leash out as a lasso, aiming to loop it around the Vicar’s hand. The Vicar raised his staff and the leash wrapped around it instead, before the Vicar tugged. The Hound planted his feet and pulled back, almost jerking the staff out of his hand before the Vicar angled it and allowed the leash to slip off. In the same motion, he withdrew a wad of chi-putty from his sleeve and flicked it at the Hound, who dove to the side to avoid it. A second glob of chi-putty struck the ground centimetres from his hand as he landed and pushed off into the air, contorting his body to narrowly avoid a bolas wrapping around his middle. In midair the Hound threw his leash to land on the ground in front of the Vicar, who stepped on the end. The Hound pulled, drawing him off-balance, and landed on his feet right in front of the Vicar, spinning around to aim a kick at his head. Avoiding the kick, the Vicar dropped to the ground and swept the Hound’s planted foot out from under him. The Hound fell through a backward flip, narrowly avoiding more chi-putty in the process, and sprang back to gain space.

He frowned. The last time he had faced Dark Acolytes had been in Paris with Adrien and his friends, and in the end he’d gotten struck with their chi-putty and taken out of the fight temporarily. He couldn’t ask his mother to help him out of this if that happened again – she would be no match for a Dark Acolyte in a straight fight. This was why the Heroes of Paris had urged him to find a partner – preferably one who didn’t use a miraculous. This was why he needed Iron Maiden. With a wince, he hit a button on the leash’s handle, sidestepping a punch from the Vicar as he did so.

“I thought I told you I didn’t want to talk to you,” she growled the moment the call connected.

“So… do you remember me telling you about those Dark Acolyte blokes?” he asked, ducking another punch and striking the Vicar in the side with an open palm. The Vicar stumbled away but swung his staff back, nearly catching the Hound in the side of the head. “You know, the guys who are obsessed with murdering miraculous users?”

“Not interested.”

“But, Iron Maiden–”

“Don’t ‘But, Iron Maiden’ me, Mutt! After the weekend I had, I’m not about to run out after _another_ bad guy.” The line clicked.

The Hound ducked beneath the Vicar’s next kick, bobbed around behind him, and punched him twice in the lower back. The Vicar fell forward, landed on his hands, and allowed his momentum to pull him through a tumble and back to his feet. The Hound sighed. In a way, he really couldn’t blame Iron Maiden for not wanting to come out here. When he’d fought with the others to rescue XY, he’d gotten injured himself, and it was only after Ladybug had repaired everything that he had even been able to bend his wrist without pain. And _that_ was just a _wrist_ ; he couldn’t imagine what Iron Maiden had to be feeling right now – both from what the Ripper had done and what he had threatened to do. All because _he_ had allowed a psychopath to escape.

Unfortunately, that still left him all alone out here against a Dark Acolyte. Since his mother didn’t have a miraculous this weekend, that also meant he couldn’t expect assistance from a senti-guard, either. And if he got hit and needed Pegasus to portal someone in to rescue him, Adrien (or more likely Chloe) would never let him hear the end of it.

The Vicar threw another bolas that skipped across the ground at his feet, and the Hound sprang away from it, contorting his body on instinct to avoid the chi-putty which the Vicar threw at the spot where he would have landed. Before he could touch the ground again, he looped his leash around the closest streetlight and gave a tug, launching himself into the air, over the trees, and away from the fight.

“We’ll have to do this again,” he called behind him. “Next time you won’t _spot_ me coming! I’ll _pound_ you into the ground! It’ll be _ruff_!”


	9. Chapter 9

_“You are mine. You will always be mine.”_

Bri stared up into the wild mane of windswept hair. The man leaned closer, his rancid breath reeking in her nostrils, and sank his sharply-pointed teeth into her cheek, pulling out a chunk. The world around her was nothing but swirling mist, dimly lit with cold blue light. Demonic red eyes bored into her very soul, laying her bare, even as the knife flashed and pierced her bare chest.

“N–no…”

_“Struggle all you want, but you are weak. You cannot protect yourself from me.”_

“P–please.”

Deeper the knife penetrated her, only stopped by her sternum. She could not move, could not fight, could not breathe. Agony. She was paralyzed by fear, cognizant of nothing but pain, even as the Ripper cut her chest open and wrenched it apart, just like he had done to the woman last week. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She tasted copper. She was sinking lower. The Ripper’s grip tightened on her shoulder, angling for better leverage–

“Bri!”

She gasped. Her eyes opened wide. Sunlight streamed in through the window. Red hair and freckles filled her vision but quickly pulled back and disappeared as Bri shot bolt upright in bed. She could still feel the Ripper’s knife against her chest. She reached down to touch the spot, sure that the hand would come away red and slick with blood. Instead she felt her pyjama top, and through it the bandages covering her still-healing cuts. No knife. She looked down at her blanket: it was drenched in sweat.

Anne sat on the edge of the bed, a relieved look in her eyes. “You’re awake finally.” She sighed. “Thank goodness.”

Bri threw her arms around Anne in a hug, sobbing.

“Hey, it’s okay, girl, you’re safe,” Anne soothed, rubbing small circles on her back. “It was a nightmare.”

Bri sniffled, her eyes clenched tightly shut. Slowly she felt her heart rate slow, her breathing evened out. At long last she released Anne and leaned her back against the wall, hugging the blanket close. She forced herself to take in a slow, deep breath, hold it, and release it. It had all just been a dream. Finally she opened her eyes to find her flatmate staring at her with a sympathetic and worried look in her eyes.

“Welcome back,” Anne told her, a small smile turning up the corners of her lips.

“Sorry I left.” Bri glanced down at her wrist to check the time, only to realize that her wrist was bare. She still hadn’t gotten used to not wearing her bracelets. Yes, they had saved her life over the weekend, but it was still a reminder of what had happened. It was still a reminder that she had nearly died, that she had only survived by pure luck. Even though her bracelets had started as nothing but a simple piece of wearable technology, they had changed over time to become something more, a part of her superhero identity – the key that operated her Iron Maiden suit. But what kind of superhero did it make her that she couldn’t even protect herself? She swallowed hard. “What time is it?”

“A little after nine.”

Bri’s eyes widened. “Don’t you have class now?”

Anne nodded. “I was just on my way out the door when I heard you,” she explained, holding up her full book bag. “I figured that Clodius Albinus has waited a few centuries, so he can wait a little longer. Checking on you seemed a little more important this morning.” She put a hand on Bri’s shoulder and squeezed gently, giving her a sympathetic look. “Are you okay now?”

Bri nodded slowly, thought a minute, and shook her head regretfully. “No… I don’t think I will be for a while,” she admitted, studying the pattern on her blanket. “But I’m not going to panic again, at least not this morning.” She looked up at Anne and forced herself to smile.

“You know, you really _can_ call Ginny if you need to,” suggested Anne, raising an eyebrow.

Bri scoffed and tried to hide her eye roll. Their Residence Welfare Lead meant well, but sometimes she came up with the most harebrained ideas. “I’ll definitely do that,” she responded, a bite to her tone.

Anne gave her a worried look but sighed, pushing herself up off the bed. “Okay…” she agreed hesitantly. “But you can call me if you need to – even if I’m in class.”

“I know – I will,” Bri promised. “Thanks.”

Anne patted Bri’s hand and smiled kindly. “Hey, what are sisters for?” she asked before leaving. The front door clicked a couple minutes later.

Bri was alone with her thoughts once more. She allowed herself a small smile, though it didn’t last long in the deathly silence of the flat. Her first class was going to start at ten; if she was going to go, she would need to get up and dress sooner than later. But did she really want to sit for half the morning in Mathematics for Engineers and work on trigonometry? With a sigh she fumbled for her undamaged bracelet and typed out a quick message to the professor. She looked down at the bracelet and unclasped the back to slide it onto her wrist, only to pause when the cool metal touched her bare skin. Did she really want to wear these? Did she _deserve_ to have these and claim to be a hero? For that matter, did they even really keep her safe? For all the features she had built into her bracelets, it had been a flaw, a shorting-out wire on a damaged bracelet, that had _actually_ saved her. Not her skills. Not her design.

Finally she forced herself to stand up and stumble down the hall to the bathroom. She had taken three showers on Saturday – one after breakfast, another after her nap, and the final one before crawling into her bed that night – all in an effort to wash the grime off her body, to cleanse herself of the feeling of utter violation that had persisted all day on the edge of her consciousness. She had showered twice on Sunday, still to no avail. She could still imagine the Ripper’s hands on her wrists, his knife slicing through her flesh. She could still taste his breath in her mouth, smell his odour infecting her nostrils. Bri stripped off her pyjamas and threw them in a pile in the corner of the bathroom before starting to peel the old bandages off her chest, leaving the one covering the deeper cut in her side alone. Most of her other cuts had proven to be superficial and had already scabbed over. She traced a finger along the longest cut, an angry red line running from her collarbone all the way down to her hips, neatly bisecting her chest. At least a few of these were almost certain to scar. If she ever wore a bikini again – or even a shirt with a moderately-low neckline – the scars would inevitably raise questions. So even thought the Ripper hadn’t taken her life or raped her, he still had taken _something_ from her in that attack.

The scalding hot water showering down over her back slowly turned to lukewarm and then tepid as Bri sat in the tub basin, hugging her knees and allowing her tears to flow freely. Even after the water had grown cold and she started to shiver, still she couldn’t bring herself to move – or even to turn the water off.

It was after lunchtime before Bri finally left the bathroom, dressed, threw a sweatshirt over her head, and forced herself to go outside. The sun hid behind a thick layer of clouds, leaving the world with a grey pallor. She hugged the sweatshirt close and considered her next action. She did have her Design class that afternoon – one of her favourites this term. But that meant seeing other people. That meant questions from her classmates about her absences this week. And the prospect of going to class and being around a lot of other people still left a hollow feeling in her stomach. She turned right to trace the familiar path to her workshop – but froze. She would be alone there. She had been attacked while leaving the workshop. Did she really want to walk past the spot where she had nearly died less than 60 hours before?

Finally she turned left to walk to the library. Anne normally went there after classes on days she didn’t work. It would be quiet, but there would still be other people around, so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Bri set a brisk pace, shying away from the strangers around her on the sidewalk, until she reached the library. Her stomach growled, and she frowned: she hadn’t actually eaten anything for dinner the night before, and she has missed both breakfast and lunch already today. Downstairs at the library she visited the Rolls Cafe, ordered a bacon sandwich and tea, and found a seat in the corner where she could watch the door. The vent below her feet blew cold air up her jeans onto her legs, and she shivered. She was just about to leave when Anne walked in. Bri started; was it already after four? On picking up her drink from the counter, Anne glanced over at her, raised her eyebrows in surprise, and immediately walked over to join her.

“You’re out of the flat!” Anne observed with a smile, dropping her bag on the floor, placing a book on the table, and claiming the chair across from Bri. “I was beginning to wonder.”

Bri chuckled humourlessly. “I figured I had to leave at _some_ point,” she replied. She glanced down at the book. “More research?”

Anne nodded sheepishly. “Last one, I swear!”

“Didn’t you say that, like, fourteen books ago?”

She shrugged. “I can’t help if they just don’t put _all_ the information in a single book,” she defended. “Everything I’ve read up to now has approached the history from the Roman perspective, but this book actually uses some Celtic sources.”

“So what do the Celts have to say for themselves?” Bri asked. It was nice to talk about something _else_ , something _different_. So many of her thoughts and conversations over the last three days had centred exclusively on the Ripper. Maybe some _ancient_ history would help to distract her from the _recent_ history.

“There aren’t _too_ many sources to draw from,” Anne admitted. She thumbed through the book. “The Celts didn’t leave a lot of written records, and the oral tradition was filtered through a Christian lens before it was written. To be honest I think the author might be giving the Celtic legends a little too much credit. But he _thinks_ one of the early Celtic creation myths points to this area as sacred, that the reason it was unsettled at the time of the Roman invasion wasn’t because it was a poor location – it wasn’t – but because it was considered to be holy.”

“Huh.” Bri raised an eyebrow dubiously. “He thinks _London_ was holy,” she deadpanned. “He never actually _visited_ London, did he?”

Anne snorted into her latte. “Like I said, I’m pretty sure he’s pinning far too much of his argument on his own interpretation of that single legend.” She turned to a map in the centre of the book that showed London after World War II with the Wall superimposed, spreading it on the table for Bri to see. “Still, that could explain why this section of London escaped the Blitz almost unscathed, given the Nazis’ preoccupation with the arcane.”

“This is starting to get a little too ‘conspiracy theory’,” Bri warned, laughing genuinely for the first time in days.

“Just because it’s a conspiracy theory doesn’t make it–” Anne froze, her eyes narrowing in confusion, and cocked her head to one side.

“Um…” Bri waved her hand in front of Anne’s face, and she blinked. “What was that?”

“Don’t you hear that?”

Bri furrowed her brows and held her breath, straining her ears. Nothing. She shook her head.

“You don’t hear something pulsing?”

“No... not even a little bit. Where do you think it’s coming from?”

Anne frowned. “I… can’t pinpoint it,” she admitted.

Bri shook her head ruefully and stood up. “Maybe it’s time to head home: I think you’ve spent too much time in this library!”


	10. Chapter 10

Tuesday afternoon, Felix rolled his neck and suppressed a groan. European History was easily his least favourite class this year, and there was no second. He enjoyed history, of course – in theory. But for as interesting as history _could_ be, Westman had a way of making it about as exciting as watching paint dry. And it was the last class of the day, which certainly didn’t help matters. He stepped out of the musty building and into the crisp fall air.

“Yo, you okay, Graham?” Charlie jumped down the steps to catch up to him, clapping him hard on the back. “You were so close to nodding off there that we had a pool going in the back on when you would actually fall asleep – extra points for guessing right if there would be any snoring!”

Felix raised an eyebrow and put his hand over his breast pocket, silencing Barkk’s quiet growls. “So who put money on me not actually falling asleep but wishing a meteor would demolish the building just for a change of pace?”

“Actually…” Charlie thought for a minute and chuckled. “I don’t think _anyone_ bet on that particular outcome!” He stopped and gave Felix a suspicious look. “So what has had you so out of it lately? You’ve been awfully quiet the last few nights…”

The reason he’d been so “quiet” since the weekend was because he had snuck out through the portal ring to patrol the streets of London every night since Iron Maiden’s attack – not that he could tell _Charlie_ that. “Oh, just had a lot on my mind lately,” he replied evasively. “Have you been following the news recently?”

“Yeah, Chelsea looks to be making a run at it this season!” Charlie enthused, pumping his fist. “That new forward, Docherty, is a real gem – he could take them all the way!”

Felix scoffed and gave him a deadpan look. “Not the Premier League, dumbass,” he told him, rolling his eyes in annoyance. “I mean the _news_.”

Charlie furrowed his brows. “What, d’you mean the Stripper Ripper?”

Felix facepalmed and shook his head. “No, I mean the _other_ serial killer on the loose in London and preying on innocent women – _of course_ I mean the Ripper!” He sighed heavily. “The monster’s killing as many women in a given fortnight as the _original_ killed in a little over two months.”

“Yeah… I saw that,” Charlie frowned. “Bad luck, don’t you think?”

“‘Bad luck’?” Felix stopped midstride and stared at him incredulously. “Have you seen what he _does_ to his victims? He absolutely _brutalizes_ them!” And Felix should know; not only had he gotten a firsthand look at the Ripper’s handiwork when he had bandaged up Iron Maiden’s injuries, but they’d also stored photos of them on the computer in their Hero Study just in case they were necessary – and _she_ was one of the lucky ones! The women who weren’t so lucky, the ones he murdered, were invariably in far worse shape once the Ripper had finished with them. Last night, Felix had found the latest victim too late, her stomach ripped open and ribcage utterly savaged.

“No, of course I haven’t seen it,” retorted Charlie, giving Felix a confused look. “Have _you_? The Yard has hardly released _any_ crime scene photos lately!”

“The descriptions the papers print are more than enough to get the mind going,” Felix responded by way of reply, shuddering. They climbed the stairs to their house.

Charlie shrugged. “That’s why I stick to the sports. Just as violent, but the violence is a little more civilized.”

“You don’t care about the Ripper and his victims?” Felix asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I feel bad, sure,” answered Charlie, nodding. “Awful what he does. Prayers to the families and all that. And I’m glad I don’t have family or friends living anywhere _near_ London at the moment.”

Felix frowned and pushed his dorm room door open. “Yeah, well, some of us aren’t so lucky.”

“What, your mum?”

Felix shook his head. “Mother has too much sense to be out late in London – rapist on the loose or no. And all his targets have been no more than five years older than us.”

“So... what? Thinking about that college girl you met at the pub the other week?” Charlie asked, passing him to go to his own room. “She was a cute thing, sure, but the odds of you ever seeing her again are pretty low. As are the odds of her being one of his victims.”

Felix rolled his eyes. _If only…_ “You realize two of his last ten victims – another two over the summer and one last spring – were all King’s College students, right?”

Charlie started, staring at Felix, halfway into his room. “Why on _earth_ would you keep track of that?”

Iron Maiden had asked about that as a pattern after the one three weeks ago but they had ultimately dismissed it. “I pay attention.” Felix’s dorm door swung open a little further, and his eyes shot wide open in shock on catching sight of the blonde lounging on his bed.

“Aren’t you going to come in, Felikins?” Chloe asked, lifting her eyes from the phone in her hand and arching an eyebrow at him languidly.

Mutely he obeyed, shutting the door behind him before Charlie or another of his housemates could see that he had company. He cocked his head at her suspiciously. “Okay… What the bloody hell are you _doing_ here, Bourgeois?” he demanded. Barkk poked her head out of his coat pocket, and her eyes widened on seeing Chloe. The Kwami flew over to her, tail wagging eagerly, and nuzzled her cheek.

“Chloe!” squealed Barkk, her tail batting against Chloe’s cheek in her excitement. “Did you bring your Bee?”

Chloe rubbed Barkk’s head with a finger but shook her head without taking her eyes off of Felix. “Bee is back at the Mansion for the moment; Sabrina’s watching her. But I’ll be sure to bring her next time.” She cleared her throat and examined Felix closely. “It’s good to see you, too, _Graham de Vanily_ ,” she replied, smirking at him.

He coughed. “It’s not that I’m _not_ glad to see you, Chloe,” he admitted. He wagged his eyebrows. “You know, there was a time I would have given _anything_ to get you into my bed!”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “I remember,” she told him. “And if you even _think_ it, I _will_ kick your ass all the way from here to Scotland and back, miraculous or no!”

He held up his hands in a sign of peace. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured her. She merely raised an eyebrow. He grinned sheepishly. “Okay, maybe I would _dream_ of it… but I wouldn’t actually _do_ it.” He paused to examine her more closely. “So why _are_ you here, Chlo?”

“ _Tante_ Emilie,” she replied, setting her phone aside and sitting up. Barkk dropped onto the nightstand and tore open a package of beef jerky, her eyes darting back and forth between Felix and Chloe. “She told me what happened – seemed to think I should come and see what’s up with you and this _Femme de Fer_ of yours.” She steepled her fingers and stared up at him with an interested look in her eyes. “So… what’s the deal?”

Felix dropped his bag on the floor and let out a breath before sinking down onto the bed next to her. A part of him wanted to keep it to himself – it was _his_ mess to deal with, not something for Chloe to stick her nose into. And this was Chloe Bourgeois, the girl who had pushed him down the Agreste Mansion stairs the first time they met when they were five – admittedly he had tried to kiss her – and who hadn’t failed to remind him of that incident at every opportunity for the next ten years. Knowing her, it was just as likely that she had come to mock him for his failure as that she had actually come out of any desire to help. He was just about to tell her where to go when he looked over at her.

All the accustomed arrogance was missing from her face. Instead, she was staring at him with a look of concern, a trace of long-buried pain in her eyes. Felix caved.

“It’s my fault,” he finally admitted, staring down at his hands. “It’s my fault that the Ripper is loose. It’s my fault that another twenty women are dead – it’s my fault that my partner was nearly one of them!” He was almost shouting by the end. Barkk settled onto his shoulder, nuzzling up against his neck. He clenched his fists, took a measured breath, and whispered. “I had him in my grasp–I could have just hit him a little harder and he would have been a bloody smear on the bricks. I could have just squeezed his stupid throat until his legs stopped kicking. I could have torn off his stupid head with my bare hands! But I didn’t. And now all that blood he’s shed is on _my_ hands.”

Chloe covered one of his fists with her hand. “What, you mean you finally realized you’re not perfect, Felikins?” She scoffed. “ _I_ could have told you that!”

He glared at her half-heartedly. “Not helping, Bourgeois.”

“Look,” she told him firmly. “So you had the opportunity to stop the rapist but you neglected to actually do it. I can’t exactly say as how that’s something _I_ ’ve ever done before, but we’ve all made our share of mistakes. I allowed my miraculous to be stolen. Alya almost caused an alien invasion. Adrien invited Ladybug into a trap that would have gotten her killed–not that he _knew_ it at the time, but still. Miss Pinky accidentally created a super-villain. The point is, we all make mistakes. We’re heroes, but we’re also human. And the fact that we’re heroes means that our mistakes can have even worse consequences than if we were just regular people. That’s just the way things are. But _now_ the question you have to deal with is what you’re going to do about your mistake.”

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve been going out to search for him every night… and he still managed to kill again last night. I was too late for yet _another_ woman. No matter what I do, it isn’t enough. And no matter what I do moving forward, it doesn’t change that my partner got hurt because of me.”

Chloe nodded. “Sometimes your best isn’t enough,” she acknowledged sympathetically. “You still _do_ it.”

“I’m not going to _stop_ ,” Felix retorted heatedly. “I can’t. Not while he’s still out there.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about just the _Ripper_ ,” she told him. “What about your partner?”

He shrugged. “I mean, she’s made it pretty clear she’s not happy and doesn’t want anything to do with me ever again. Not that I can really blame her for that.”

“Big surprise: she’s lashing out at people around her after a traumatic experience. Have I told you about how I almost ripped Sabrina’s head off last spring?” asked Chloe.

“She does still need you,” Barkk added, flitting around to look him in the eye. “Even if she isn’t really saying it.”

Felix sighed, looking between the two. “So what do I do?”

“Look, I don’t know this girl, but I can tell you based on my _own_ experience that she probably needs time and space to recover, so don’t bother her,” Chloe replied slowly. “But even if she isn’t ready to admit it yet, she also still needs you to be her friend and be supportive. So don’t just cut her out and ditch her.”

Felix stared at her dumbfounded. “So give her space, but don’t leave her alone? How the bloody hell am I supposed to do that!?!”

Chloe hummed in amusement, glanced down at her watch, and stood up. Barkk gave Chloe a surprised look, and Chloe rubbed the Kwami’s head gently. Finally Chloe strode over to his closet, pushed his clothes aside, and pressed her palm against the portal set against the back wall. “Yes, I suppose that is a bit of a conundrum… but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You can’t expect me to give you _all_ the answers, Felikins. Well, byeee!” she called, hopping through the portal.

Felix stared after her as Barkk dropped to sit on his shoulder. “That was… crystal unclear,” he grumbled.


	11. Chapter 11

It wasn’t until after dinner on Tuesday that Bri could finally bring herself to trace the well worn path back to her workshop – and even then it was only because the flat was far too quiet. She had been scheduled to work at the auto shop twice already, but she hadn’t been able to motivate herself to go – she had skipped that day’s classes, also. But this evening Anne was at work, Bri wasn’t all that close to any of the other girls on their floor, and while she would also be alone at the workshop, at least she would have her suit for company. And since the Ripper had struck just last night, she could be reasonably certain that he would not be on the prowl tonight – assuming that the Hound was correct about his pattern. Her stomach clenched unpleasantly. Another woman was dead – the second one since she was attacked – she could imagine what the scene must have been. Another woman was dead, but Bri had somehow survived.

With a resigned sigh, Bri set an alarm on her undamaged bracelet to go off before sundown and trekked the few blocks down the Strand to the alleyway, carefully ignoring the streetlight on the corner as she turned past it. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she stopped in front of the patch of gravel which marked the spot where she had been attacked, mere metres from the street. Had things turned out differently less than a week ago, she would have _died_ there. _She_ would have been the one cut open and raped. She could feel the steel against her skin – unconsciously her hand drifted up to rub the spot below her collarbone where the scab began.

Maybe this _wasn’t_ such a good idea.

Steeling her nerves, Bri forced herself to skirt past the gravel, hustling down the alleyway to put as much distance between her and that spot as she possibly could. She only slowed her pace when she was inside of the lab and the door had shut behind her. Inside, everything was exactly where she had left it: each tool was in its place, her grease rag hung on a nail, even her suit appeared undisturbed, despite the Hound clearly having come and gone several times since she had last been here. Her damaged bracelet still sat on the workbench, the shattered screen clearly visible, two wires protruding from it. The bracelet had somehow saved her life... but it still reminded her of what had happened. She had been weak and helpless. She could still feel the Ripper’s hands holding her wrists fast, pinning her to the ground. She could still feel the cold steel slicing through her skin, cleanly bisecting her torso, carving outlines around her chest. She could still feel _him_ against her thigh. With a scream of frustration, she clenched her eyes shut and swept everything off the workbench, sending her bracelet tumbling to the ground. She collapsed onto the stool in front of the bench, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.

“I sure hope that wasn’t expensive,” a feminine voice observed behind her. Bri tensed. “Of course, considering how well your Beam of Life has been selling lately, you can probably afford to replace a few tools!”

Bri spun around to find a girl who looked vaguely familiar leaning against the wall next to the portal ring. The stranger ran a hand through her high blonde ponytail and swept it over to fall in front of her shoulder, combing it with her fingers and staring at Bri, a calculating look in her eyes. Bri narrowed her eyes own suspiciously, her free hand finding a wrench, the control for her one working bracelet already in the other hand. “Who the hell are you?”

The blonde rolled her eyes. “I realize you claim London now, but you _are_ still from Paris, so I _know_ you recognize me.”

Bri looked closer. Something about the girl resonated in her mind on some level. She carried herself tall and proud, almost like a princess–“Chloe Bourgeois.”

“In the flesh,” Chloe acknowledged, examining her fingernails, not moving from her place by the wall.

“How did you find me?”

Chloe arched her eyebrows in disbelief. “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that,” she told her. “I’ve been waiting with Amelie for hours for you to show up here.” Bri furrowed her brows. “I suppose I should actually be _thanking_ you for that,” Chloe mused. “I can’t _remember_ the last time I had tea with Amelie…”

“I’m happy to oblige.” Bri raised an eyebrow in challenge. “So _better_ question: _what_ the hell are you doing here?”

Chloe scoffed. “Is that any way to talk to a hero?”

Bri sighed in annoyance. “So what do you want?”

Chloe shrugged. “A little birdy told me that you had some ‘fun’ over the weekend, and Ladybug thought I might be the one to talk some sense into you two.”

Bri stared at the blonde, who arrogantly flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. “Who do you think you are to come in here like you know me?” she demanded.

“I _don’t_ know you,” Chloe agreed, her mouth turning down into a frown. “But Ladybug likes to think I’m her ‘ambassador’ or something to keep our international allies happy. French you may be, but Londoner you are now. That makes you one of those ‘international allies.’ And as far as I can tell, you and Felikins don’t seem overly happy at the moment. Hence, me.”

“‘Felikins’,” Bri deadpanned. “ _That_ ’s what you call him?”

Chloe smirked. “You should hear some of the things _he_ ’s called _me_!”

Bri averted her eyes to the floor. “So you’re here because Ladybug thinks I’m broken.”

“I’m here because Ladybug’s real superpower is compassion and she can’t stand to see anyone even a little bit sad,” Chloe corrected. “But _because_ she’s such a softy, she relies on _me_ to be the one to talk some sense into the people who need it.”

Bri’s eyes flashed with anger. “Oh, so you think I need some _sense_ talked into me!?! I was _assaulted_! I was nearly _raped_! I was almost _murdered_! I _still_ can’t sleep through the night without nightmares! So don’t you _pretend_ to know what I’ve been through, Miss High-and-Mighty Queen of Paris!” she screamed.

Chloe’s mouth set in a firm line. “You’re right: I _don’t_ know what it’s like to be assaulted, almost raped, almost killed, and all of that in less than ten minutes. I _wish_ it had been that short. Do you _really_ want to compare experiences?” She stalked over and slammed her palm on the workbench. The metal surface rang as Bri’s ball peen hammer fell off its hook. Chloe’s eyes flashed. “I was abducted by the Lynchpin. He stole my miraculous and handed it over to that Killer _Bitch_ who’s been using it for evil for the last half a year.” Her voice rose in volume with every sentence. “I was held for _days_ – so long I lost track of time. I was sleep deprived and starved for a week. I was pressed for information. When I refused to crack and betray my friends, Lynchpin threatened to let his men rape me until I finally broke, and only to kill me when he had used me up and was ready to spit me out. _You_ ’ve got nightmares? _I_ ’ve got those in spades! So no, I _don’t_ know _your_ trauma; _I’ve got more than enough of my own_!”

Bri’s eyes had widened more and more in shock as Chloe spoke. _This_ had happened to one of the Heroes of Paris? Her own father’s employer had done _that_? And yet… She pursed her lips. “And you think what _you_ went through gives you the right to tell me off for getting pissed off after what happened to _me_?”

Chloe shook her head, sighing heavily. Her shoulders slumped. “I’m not here for that,” she answered, hopping up to sit on the edge of the workbench. “If I was, I’d be a hypocrite, considering how pissed off _I_ was after what happened to _me_. _I_ kept on walking down dark alleys just _hoping_ that the assholes who’d hurt me would show up so I could kick their asses – to the point that Ladybug actually staged an intervention to stop me before I got myself hurt. So I’m not pretending to be a model of healthy coping mechanisms. But I _can_ tell you that things _do_ get better, even if it looks shitty in the moment.”

“Did you ever find them?” Bri asked. “The ones who hurt you?”

“Eventually,” Chloe replied, her lips curling maliciously. “Let’s just say those particular bastards won’t be hurting anyone else for a long time…”

“Did that help with the nightmares?”

Chloe shook her head, letting out a heavy sigh. “The thing that actually helped with those was my puppy.”

“Have they gone away?”

“They come less often, but they still come, even _with_ Bee there to keep me company.”

“Well… good for you.” Bri put her elbows on the bench and cradled her chin. “I suppose you think I’m weak for not wanting to go out and try to stop the Ripper.”

Chloe scoffed. “If I were in your metal shoes, I would want to rip the Ripper’s head off and shit down his throat, but that might just be me,” she told her wryly. “It’s up to you how you decide to respond.”

“It’s just… I thought I was a superhero,” Bri began softly. “I thought I could take care of myself. It turns out I was just fooling myself.”

“You were alone and scared and you got hurt. That’s not on you. There’s a reason we work in pairs – and as much as I used to think I didn’t need it, there is a definite benefit. Hell, even the best of us don’t go out alone when they can absolutely help it.” Chloe chuckled and tapped her chin in thought. “You know, a couple weeks ago Multiplice and I were out on patrol when we had to help a family after a car accident. And even the two of us couldn’t do it all on our own; we couldn’t get the driver out until a fire-fighter showed up with the Beam of Life to cut her out.”

Bri raised her eyebrows in surprise. Her invention had actually helped save someone’s life in Paris? The City of Paris had bought the first thousand of her device that they had produced, shortly followed by London, Lyons, and Rouen, but she hadn’t realized they were even out of the field testing stage yet.

“It’s funny,” Chloe went on, giving Bri a calculating look. “That wouldn’t have been possible if _someone_ hadn’t decided to become a hero…”

Bri sighed and stared at Chloe, frowning. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “I haven’t a clue what you mean,” she insisted in faux-innocence. She held her poker face for a beat longer before snorting. “Is it working?”

“I’m just… not ready yet,” Bri admitted, shrugging noncommittally. “It’s still too fresh.”

Chloe nodded in acceptance and stood up, activating the portal ring as she did so. “Ultimately it’s your call. But if you need to talk to someone, the Heroes of Paris have a couple people who can help you process this.” Her smile broke, tears in her eyes. “That’s something we didn’t really have when _I_ needed it. _Tante_ Emilie is especially good at this sort of thing. So… give it some thought. You can let Amelie know if you want to talk to her.” With that, she hopped through the portal ring. Bri caught a glimpse of a head of platinum-blonde hair in the background before the portal closed.

Bri sighed, staring down at the bracelet on the floor surrounded by tools, pencils, notepads, and a container of screws she had knocked over. Her hand drifted to the bracelet’s twin on her wrist. She didn’t know if she really wanted to use it, but it just didn’t sit right in her mind for one of her paired bracelets to remain inoperative. A glance at the time indicated that she still had an hour before sundown. Finally she collected the bracelet off the floor, opened the correct schematic on her tablet, and got to work designing an upgrade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident Chloe mentioned happened in “The Heroes of Paris: Patrol Logs,” [Chapter 12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732992/chapters/68870202).


	12. Chapter 12

The sun had been down for almost an hour already when Felix hopped through the portal ring into Iron Maiden’s workshop. He frowned on catching sight of the disarray on the workbench. When he had arrived the night before, it had looked as though someone had thrown everything from the bench onto the floor; tonight it looked no different. If possible, it even looked worse, with wires and circuits scattered all over the workbench, the tools not replaced. Felix picked up a couple small screwdrivers from the floor and returned them to their accustomed spots on her corkboard.

Barkk whined piteously. “Poor Maiden,” she commented, resting a paw on one of the wrenches.

Felix nodded, his jaw set in a firm line. “Poor Maiden, indeed,” he agreed, frowning.

The Kwami gave him a sharp look. “You know you didn’t actually do this to her, right?”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly feel that way.”

Barkk settled onto his shoulder and put her paw on his cheek. “Remember what Chloe said: what are you going to do about it now?”

He shrugged. “Other than what I’m doing? I don’t know.” He cautiously left the workshop and made his way down the alley before transforming and leaping up to the rooftops to start his circuit. The Ripper had struck two nights ago, so if he was following his pattern, he would probably attack again tonight or tomorrow night. And if the Hound was lucky, he would be close by when it happened so he stop him and could put an end to his reign of terror for good. It wasn’t enough that the Ripper had terrorized the city for months. It wasn’t enough that he had antagonized the Hound personally. It wasn’t even enough that the Ripper had murdered countless women. He had traumatized Felix’s _friend_. He’d had the opportunity to stop him once and failed to do it. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“How are you tonight, dear?” his mother asked over the communicator.

The Hound sighed heavily. “I’ll be doing so much better if I get a chance to beat someone up.”

“Just be careful.”

“Yes, mother.” The Hound jogged around the city once at a brisk pace to work the stiffness out of his muscles after a long day spent sitting at desks in classrooms. The cloud cover had descended to hang mere meters above the roofs of the buildings he ran across; Big Ben itself was partly obscured by the clouds, as was the London Eye. In spite of the streetlights, the Hound found himself running across rooftops he could barely see, picking his way around obstacles purely by virtue of his miraculous-enhanced vision and the light coming from the streetlamps and reflecting obliquely off the clouds. Sound echoed strangely from below as the Hound shifted his focus to run specifically around the section he had identified as the Ripper’s killing zone. Thanks to the citywide curfew, very few pedestrians were out this late; those that needed to go somewhere stuck close to the streetlights and gave alley entrances a wide berth. A handful of cars were on the streets. The Hound jogged above it all, following the Strand toward the border of the City of London.

He was only a block or so away when he spotted light reflecting off the clouds to the north from the same building where he had seen it over the weekend. The Hound furrowed his brows and turned north to investigate. Once could be attributed to an anomaly; twice could still be a coincidence. But all the same…

He hadn’t covered more than half the distance when the silence was pierced by a shriek from the east – preternaturally loud in his miraculous ears. The Hound’s eyes widened. A chill ran down his spine on hearing the cry; it cut off abruptly, and his heart dropped into his stomach. His boots almost slipped on the roof tiles as he skidded to a stop and changed direction, catching his leash around a chimney to manoeuvre himself through a sharp turn before swinging across the street. His footsteps pounded too loud in the stillness that followed that cry, his heart thudding hard in his chest. If that shout was what he thought it was, he didn’t have any time to lose–

So intent was he on listening for another scream that he almost missed the whistling sound coming up from the street below him. Almost. On instinct he lunged forward through a roll, moments before a wad of chi-putty hurtled through the air directly in front of him and splattered on the building’s angled roof. The Hound spun quickly to find the source of the chi-putty. It was the Vicar. With a groan, the Hound jumped off the roof, bent his knees to cushion his landing, and transferred his momentum forward, driving his fist into the Vicar’s face.

“You again?” he demanded, ducking under the Vicar’s wild counterpunch. “I don’t have time for you!”

“Is it that Dark Acolyte?” His mother’s voice sounded worried. “Do be careful!”

“Well you had better _make_ time, miraculous abuser!” retorted the Vicar, eyes flashing ferociously. He planted his quarterstaff on the ground, spun around into the air, and aimed a kick at the Hound’s head.

“A woman’s life may be at stake!” the Hound shouted, springing back away from the Vicar’s kick and lunging forward to punch him twice in the stomach as he landed. “There is a monster out there targeting women, and I’m pretty sure he just attacked again!”

“The only monster _I_ see is the one who is using a miraculous which will throw the world out of balance!” The Vicar sprang back away from the double punch, flicking chi-putty at the Hound.

“You Dark Acolyte blokes need to get your stories straight,” the Hound commented sardonically, sidestepping the chi-putty and jumping into a flying kick at the Vicar’s head just as a bolas skipped across the pavement under him. “ _We_ aren’t the ones imbalancing things! _We_ are the ones trying to _help_ people! And all _you_ ’re doing right now is preventing me from helping someone in danger!”

“Ha!” The Vicar scoffed, rolled forward, and sprang to his feet, whipping around to catch the Hound with his back turned. He swung his staff two-handed at the Hound’s leg. “If you truly wish to help people, then give up that miraculous. _That_ will _really_ help the world!”

The Hound snorted and jumped over the swinging quarterstaff. “I _assure_ you, that’s not going to happen.” He flicked his leash down at the Vicar’s feet, but the Vicar spun over the cord, planted his staff on the ground, and aimed a kick at the Hound’s head. The Hound grimaced as he ducked under the kick and edged around the Vicar’s chi-putty throw. He couldn’t keep going like this – not when the Ripper was on the prowl – and may have just attacked. With a groan he hit the button on his leash handle to make the call.

Iron Maiden answered on the second ring. “What do you want, Hound?” she asked, her voice sounding oddly detached.

The Hound grunted and blocked a punch before aiming a blow of his own at the Vicar’s face. “I hate to bother you, Maiden,” he began, leaping back out of the Vicar’s range, “but I find myself fighting this stupid Dark Acolyte again… and the Ripper is out – I’m sure of it. Um… any chance of an assist, partner?”

She let out a heavy breath. “I’m sorry… I _do_ want to help, but…” Her breathing hitched. “With the Ripper out…”

“It’s okay,” he responded, grunting in frustration as the Vicar sidestepped around another punch, and knocked him off balance. “I probably shouldn’t have called.”

“No–it’s okay,” she replied quickly. “I just–” She sniffled. “I’m not ready yet. Are you…?”

“Oh, yeah,” he assured her, too quickly. His eyes widened as the Vicar sent a pair of bolas skipping across the pavement at his ankles. He jumped over it and contorted his body to avoid two wads of chi-putty that flew by on either side of his torso. “It’s just–”

A bloodcurdling shriek of anguish pierced the night, coming from the same direction as the cry he had heard before. The Hound’s heart stopped; he stumbled as he landed, nearly losing his balance. He didn’t react when the Vicar struck him across the back with his quarterstaff.

“What was that!?!” Iron Maiden demanded, gasping.

The Hound didn’t answer. Nothing mattered but speed. He left the Vicar in the dust and raced in the direction of the noise, sprinting down the deserted street. The wind whistled around his ears as he ran. Chi-putty splattered against a streetlamp next to him, but he couldn’t stop. He strained his ears for another cry, afraid he would hear it and afraid he wouldn’t. The streets were deserted, no cars or pedestrians to be seen. The scream had come from an alley just down the block; with a burst of speed he turned the corner and nearly stopped in shock.

Halfway down the alley the Ripper crouched over a motionless form in the deep shadows against one wall. As the Hound approached, he saw a pair of high heels, one with the stiletto broken. One leg twitched. The woman lay still, her arms splayed on the ground. The Ripper let out a guttural grunt.

“Hey, Jackass!” the Hound shouted, putting on a burst of speed and spinning his leash over his head as a lariat.

The Ripper straightened up and turned around in surprise, a wild look in his eyes. Wiry, tangled hair clung to the sides of his head. His flinty grey eyes narrowed on the Hound. Underneath him, the Hound caught a glimpse of the woman prone on the ground, lying in the centre of an expanding puddle of blood, a knife handle sticking out of her stomach. The Ripper opened his mouth and shouted something before plunging his hand down into the woman’s stomach. Her back arched and she flopped to the ground limp as he withdrew his hand. The Ripper sprang to his feet, clutching something in one hand, and hobbled away down the alley, holding up his pants with his free hand.

Unconsciously, the Hound let out a guttural growl, eyes narrowing to thin slits.

“Please tell me,” Iron Maiden begged. “What’s going on?”

“You–you don’t need to know.” The Hound disconnected the call and sprinted down the alley, his eyes flashing with rage, whipping his leash out after the monster. But as fast as he could throw, he couldn’t make up the distance in time. The Ripper turned the corner moments before the leash reached him, just as the Hound skidded to a stop next to the victim, dropping to his knees at her side. A long deep gash bisected her torso from neck to pelvis, her skin drawn apart to reveal her exposed ribs. Blood pooled in her chest cavity and ran down her sides onto the pavement. The Hound tried to force himself to turn away from the sight, swallowing down bile. The woman drew in a rasping breath, pulling the Hound’s attention back to her face. Her mouth opened and shut feebly, her eyes fluttering open even as the light in them faded.

The Hound took another look down the alley where the Ripper had disappeared. He could go after him – and he _might_ even find him, even with his head start. But what of the victim? In that moment, he could only see Iron Maiden as he had found her the week before, terrified and in pain. She hadn’t wanted to be alone after that. And this woman was even worse – dying. Resolved, he took one of the woman’s hands with both of his own and looked down into her eyes. The woman blinked up at him pleadingly. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“I–I’m sorry,” the Hound whispered, squeezing her hand, blinking back tears. “I wasn’t fast enough. There–there’s nothing I can do to save you.” He let out a breath, his eyes taking on a determined glint. As the woman released her last breath, he promised her and all of the other victims, “But I swear I will stop the monster that did this. I _will_ bring him down once and for all.”


	13. Chapter 13

Bri slowly trudged out of her Electrical and Electronic Engineering class into the grey afternoon on Thursday, her hands in her pockets, hugging her new Ladybug sweatshirt close for comfort. She hadn’t wanted to go to class today, either – all she had wanted to do for the last week was to sleep – sleep and pretend that she had never even _heard_ of the Stripper Ripper. She had tried to call her mother the day before to talk to her about… about Friday. She had woken up Wednesday morning in a cold sweat, the Ripper’s stench burning in her throat, terrified that he would be standing over her–that he had somehow found her and was in her bedroom, ready to finish the job. Her finger had been hovering over her mother’s contact information on the screen of her newly-repaired bracelet when she had paused.

If she told her mother, her mother would of course tell her father. And Bri had no illusions about what her father would do if he found out what had happened to her. And for as much as she _wanted_ her father to have Mecha-Man stomp the Ripper’s face into jelly, his last visit had almost ended in half of London exploding. If that happened again now, and as a result of her actions, whatever meagre catharsis the Ripper’s demise might bring would be more than outweighed by the guilt of indirectly causing even more damage to the city.

Although Bri was starting to change her mind, if the previous night was any portent of the future.

Even if she hadn’t heard that anguished shriek through the phone, it had been loud enough and close enough for her to hear it from her bedroom. Despite being on the phone, the Hound had hardly said another word to her after that. When the call had disconnected abruptly, she had nearly panicked – not from fear for _him_ but because of what she could already envision that his sudden silence meant. She had tried calling the Hound back, but he hadn’t answered. It had been morning before she found out what had happened from the e-news. Another Ripper attack, another woman gutted, raped, and murdered. She had finally called Amelie, who had confirmed what she already suspected: the Hound had arrived too late to save the victim and missed capturing the Ripper by mere moments. All because of that goddamn Dark Acolyte.

All because she was too weak and scared to go out and help him.

Despite the clusters of people she could see walking around the campus, huddling in small groups beside benches and trees – some of whom she even recognized from shared classes – Bri felt utterly alone. The sky over her head rumbled – an impending thunderstorm to match the storm clouds raging in her mind. She looked up into the sky and watched the cloud formations swirl around in the wind. A couple drops fell on her face, and she pulled up the sweatshirt’s hood, pulling it tight for warmth. That could have been _her_ , dying alone in an alley because no one came to help her in time. Dying because help had been waylaid.

A flash of colour from the far side of the campus caught her eye. A man in dark purple robes with sandy blond hair strode purposely down the sidewalk, a long, thin walking staff in his hand, apparently cutting across the college. Bri was about to turn away – King’s College attracted all sorts of strange people – but stopped to take a closer look. She had only seen a handful of the pictures of Dark Acolytes taken by the Heroes of Paris, but something about the way this man carried himself set off alarm bells in her head. Suspicious, she jogged across the campus to follow him.

The man led her east along the Strand a couple of blocks, setting a brisk pace as he walked. Bri narrowed her eyes: while she wasn’t close enough to make it out, he appeared to be speaking to himself, gesturing subtly with one hand. Surreptitiously she raised her left arm, aimed carefully, and shot a tiny bug that snagged in the back of his robe. She extracted a wireless earbud from her bracelet to listen in.

“Why would the miraculous abuser be so interested in this area of the city?” the man muttered to himself. “Why would he claim to be helping people, _despite_ using a miraculous?”

Bri’s eyes widened. This was the man who had attacked the Hound – the Vicar. _This_ was the reason he couldn’t save the victim last night! The Dark Acolyte turned up Chancery Lane with Bri only a block behind him, racing to reach the corner and keep him in sight. She looked furtively around at the small number of people on the streets, none of whom paid her any attention. It was close to dinnertime. The clouds cut off the sunset, giving the appearance of being later in the day than it really was. All the same, she didn’t want to be out past nightfall…

But if she allowed this Dark Acolyte to get away, what might happen the next time the Hound tried to stop the Ripper? What if he ambushed the Hound while he was just out on patrol? And anyways, if the Ripper stuck to pattern, she was safe for tonight.

The Dark Acolyte turned into the archway by the library, and Bri hustled to catch up, her steps loud to her ears on the cobblestones. She raced after him but pulled up short when she peeked around the corner to find him standing under the covered archway, watching her.

“I know you are there,” he announced, eyeing her warily. “Why are you following me?”

Bri pressed her back against the brick wall along Chancery, trying to still her racing heart. The clouds above turned darker. “Are you the Vicar, the one who keeps attacking miraculous users?”

He gave an amused hum and raised an eyebrow. “If you are asking that question, you must already know the answer.”

Bri flicked her wrists and caught the controls for both her bracelets, holding them inside her sleeves. Hands clenched into white-knuckled fists around the controls, she stepped around the corner, eyes narrowed at him in a challenge. “Why don’t you try your luck with _me_?”

“You may wish you hadn’t made that offer, girl,” the Vicar observed. Quick as lightning, he whipped a wad of chi-putty from his sleeve and flung it at her. It glommed onto her sweatshirt, sticking to a black spot near her collarbone. The Vicar smirked. “All too easy.”

Bri arched an eyebrow and glanced down at the chi-putty stain dispassionately. “Was that supposed to _do_ something?” she asked sardonically before pressing a button and whipping her arm around as quick as lightning. The barrel deployed from her right bracelet as she brought it to bear, sending a beam of energy straight at the Vicar’s head.

The Vicar stared at her in wide-eyed shock. He dove to the ground and scrambled backward around the corner and out from under the archway and into the deserted courtyard beyond as Bri peppered the ground around him with energy blasts. She advanced on him, eyes aflame, aiming her bracelet at the corner around which he had fled. She slowly, carefully slid around the corner, watching for the Vicar’s attack. “Not so tough now, are you?” she taunted.

The Vicar charged around the corner, quarterstaff raised, swinging for her head. “Any friend of a miraculous abuser is my enemy!” Bri dropped her foot back, retracted her energy weapon, and raised her arms in an X shape to catch the strike on both bracelets, redirecting it to the side and away from herself. The Vicar stumbled. Bri dropped into a crouch, leaned forward, and punched him in the gut. He let out a surprised grunt and imbalanced, falling onto his back foot. The end of his staff dropped to the ground, and he slid it forward, catching it behind her knee and pulling her foot off the ground. She stumbled backward and hit the cobblestones on her butt with a grunt. “There is no mercy for those who threaten the balance of the universe!”

Bri glared up at him. “That’s okay; I wasn’t going to offer _you_ any mercy, either!” She shifted her position to bring her legs under herself and surged forward, arms outstretched, lunging straight into his gut. Eyes widening in surprise, the Vicar brought his quarterstaff to bear, but too late. She caught him in a flying tackle and knocked him backward, landing astride his chest, the quarterstaff pinned between them. With a scream she punched him in the chest, eliciting a gasp. Again and again she drove her fists into his chest. “You think you’re _helping_ people!?!” she demanded, slapping him across the face. “You’re only _hurting_ them!” Another punch. “My _friend_ was trying to _save_ someone last night, and You. Stopped. Him!” Again and again she punched him with each word. “Another woman dead, because of _you_!” She brought her fists together over her head and slammed them down into his chest.

The Vicar spat a mouthful of blood onto the cobblestones beside him and glared up at her. “You think you can blame me for the actions of the miraculous abuser?” He exhaled through his nose and simultaneously drove his fist into her gut. Bri gasped in shock at the force of it – so much it pushed her off of him into the air. As she came down, he followed up the punch with a kick to the stomach that sent her flying backward across the courtyard. He kipped to his feet and loomed over her, his staff clenched tightly in one hand. With a gasp Bri pushed herself up on one elbow, glaring up at him. The Vicar advanced, eyes wild with anger. “I am not the one using magic which imbalances the universe!”

“I’m not, either!” she snapped. He raised his staff, twirled it once over his head, and swung in a downward chop. Bri raised her arm and got off a quick shot, hitting the quarterstaff in the middle and bisecting it cleanly. The broken half fell into her other hand and she swung at his legs. He jumped back away from her, and she shot her grappling hook, looping it around one of his legs. His eyes widened and she jerked him to the ground. She hit the new button on her control, sending an electric pulse down the grapple wire. The Vicar convulsed, a stifled yelp of pain escaping his throat. She released the button and rose to her feet, aiming the energy pistol on her other bracelet at his head, her finger on the triggers of both bracelets. He fell back to the ground, gasping for breath. “Now leave my friend alone!”

He stared up at her in shock, mouth agape, and kicked his leg out, knocking the grappling hook away from his ankle. Bri hit the taser trigger again, but too late. The moment he was free the Vicar rolled backward to his feet, narrowly avoiding the energy pulse that shattered a cobblestone beneath his hand, and ran off without looking back. Bri shifted her other bracelet to the grappling hook and shot, narrowly missing his waist as he fled. He raced across the cobbled sidewalk past the library, Bri in hot pursuit. Reaching Fetter Lane, he dove around the corner of the building. When Bri reached the street, he had disappeared.

Bri groaned in frustration as her grappling hooks retracted automatically. She’d let him get away! She almost didn’t hear her bracelet ringing with an incoming call. With a sigh she hit the button. “Hello?”

“Hey, girl!” Anne called cheerily. “I was just finishing up at the library archives – leaving onto Chancery right now. You wouldn’t believe what I found out today! I was looking up the history of the college property before the founding of London.”

Bri relaxed on hearing her flatmate’s voice. “So how much more of this research are you planning to do?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I mean, I can’t just stop _now_ ,” she replied with a carefree laugh. “The next book might have exactly what I’m looking for and contradict everything I’ve found already!”

“It sounds like an addiction,” Bri observed in some amusement.

“You have no idea.” Anne hummed in confusion. Her voice became softer as if she had taken the phone away from her mouth. “Hang on, can I help you? I–” Her voice cut off with a startled gasp.

“Anne?” Bri stared down at her bracelet. It remained silent. “Anne!?!”

Heaving breathing on the other end of the line. A voice she would never forget whispered, “You will do nicely for the sacrifice.”

“Anne!”


	14. Chapter 14

The phone on Felix’s nightstand rang, pulling his attention away from the English Literature essay he needed to turn in the next morning. It was still nothing more than a blank screen, the blinking cursor taunting him. He had spent the entire afternoon since his last class let out trying to write, but without success. Every time he wrote a handful of words, he deleted the whole thing and started over. More often than not, all he could do was stare at the page, thinking about the woman he had failed the night before, hearing her rattling final breath, imagining the accusatory look in her eyes. Or he saw the Ripper’s face, swimming in front of him through the gloom, and envisioned what could have happened if he had only been quicker. The phone rang again, and Felix stared at it blankly.

Barkk stirred from her place curled up on his desk and looked up from the ball she was batting around, eyeing him in surprise. “Hound? Aren’t you going to answer her?”

“Huh?” He blinked and refocused on the phone screen, frowning. “Good evening, Iron Maiden,” he greeted her, picking it up. On the other end of the line, all he could hear was wheezing, gasping breaths. “What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer. “Iron Maiden?”

“He–he took her!”

Felix gasped, eyes widening in shock. “ _Who_? Took _whom_?” Barkk shot up into the air, startled, staring at Felix with her mouth open in confusion.

Iron Maiden gulped down air, her breathing ragged. Finally she managed to speak. “I was by the library, and Anne called me, and we were talking, and then someone must’ve approached her, and the next thing I heard was _him_!” she shrieked.

Felix swallowed hard, meeting Barkk’s worried eyes. “You mean…”

“The Ripper has her!”

Felix forced his voice to remain calm, to not betray any of the vast array of emotions that statement brought up. Iron Maiden and her flatmate were close – very close. This on top of her attack almost a week ago… And after Felix had arrived too late the night before… His mouth set in a firm line, his eyes hardening. Not again. _Never_ again. “Where are you?”

“Campus library.”

Felix was already out of his desk chair and running over to the closet, Barkk hovering next to his head. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Just a couple minutes.”

He threw the closet open and placed his thumb on the reader of the metal box hanging from the closet’s back wall just above the level of his head. A row of lights along the edges activated, and the box began to fold apart, stretching out to cover his width before the bottom dropped to reach the floor. The space within the ring began to swirl white, and he saw Iron Maiden’s workshop through the portal, the lights turning on as the portal opened. He was through in an instant, already calling for his transformation before the workshop door had even opened. The portal closed and ring returned to its inactive state as soon as he was through, and he barrelled out the doorway and into the dusky gloom.

His feet splashing in the puddles left behind by the day’s precipitation, the Hound tossed his leash to loop around a streetlight and pull himself off the ground. He launched himself into the air, soaring over the backyard of the closest house, landing on the house’s slanted roof, and racing across to jump that street to the house on the opposite side. His feet slipped on the slick tiles, and he nearly face planted before grabbing the roof’s peak and pulling himself up. At this moment, nothing mattered but speed. He had failed to stop the Ripper so many times already; he couldn’t allow himself to fail again. Not when his friend needed him. Not when his friend’s best friend was in danger. “Mother?” he called into his communicator urgently.

“What’s happening, sweetie?” she responded promptly.

“Iron Maiden,” he reported tersely, launching himself into the air across the next street. He threw himself forward, hurtling pell-mell across the building’s roof.

His mother gasped. “What happened? Is she all right?”

“Her flatmate was taken–it was the Ripper.” The Hound landed on all fours on the edge of the next house and scrambled up the slanting roof. His feet slipped on the slick shingles, but he swung himself over the peak and slid down the other side. The library loomed in the distance, just a block away. Reaching the edge of the roof he coiled his legs and sprang off into space. “Check the police scanner.”

“Already on it.” His mother was quiet, the only sound through the communicator the clicking of her keyboard. “Police are already en route. You will probably arrive before them.”

“Still too late,” he grumbled.

“You couldn’t possibly have anticipated something like this, dear,” she consoled him.

“Maybe not. But still…”

“What’s important is to be there for her now.”

He let out a breath as the library came into view. “Yes, Mother.” Mere minutes after he’d received the call, the Hound landed atop the library archway and looked down to find Iron Maiden pacing agitatedly in front of the library door on Chancery Lane, wringing her hands. She reached the corner of the library, turned, and looked up at the Hound, staring back at her. He immediately jumped off the archway to land right in front of her, and she threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. “I–Iron Maiden?” he asked in surprise, hesitantly putting his hands on her back.

“He took Anne!” she gasped, holding him tightly, eyes squeezed shut, tears pouring down her face and onto the front of his miraculous suit. “I–I don’t know–”

“Hey, shh…” he consoled her, rubbing her back carefully. “I’m here. I’ll find her.” He sighed heavily, a firm set to his jaw. “I’m sorry I let him go,” he whispered. “I’m sorry–I’m sorry about what happened to you.” He sighed heavily. “I’m–I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

“I know.” She squeezed him tighter. “I’m sorry for yelling,” she mumbled into his collar. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. I–I know it’s not your fault–not really.”

He let out a breath and frowned darkly. “If I had just stopped him then and there, none of this would be happening now.”

“Yeah.” She leaned back and looked him in the eye, her cheeks stained with tears. “And if I had actually _caught_ him instead of _missing_ that night, he would have been locked up where he couldn’t hurt anyone.”

“It’s not your fault, _mon Fer_ ,” he assured her, squeezing her shoulder gently. “After what he did to you, you did well just to survive.”

She nodded, gulped audibly.

“And I promise you, I _will_ make this right.” His eyes took on a hard look. “I will find Anne. Do you know where she was when he attacked her?”

“That’s the thing: she was right here!” Iron Maiden gestured toward the library door behind them. “She said she had just left here when she called, and we’d only been on the phone for a couple minutes when the Ripper approached her. Then… nothing. Maybe she didn’t call right away, but she couldn’t have gotten _that_ far. Certainly no further than the Strand.”

“The police will arrive momentarily,” his mother reported over his communicator. “There haven’t been any other suspicious activities since then.” There was a pause. She sighed heavily, her voice cracking. “Tell her… tell her I’m here for her if she needs anything.”

The Hound guided Iron Maiden to sit on the library steps, cautiously wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, shivering. “Where would he take her?” he wondered, frowning.

“ _Why_ would he take her?” she responded, clenching her trembling fists and smacking her thighs in agitation. “He’s–he’s never done anything like this before!”

The Hound shook his head in confusion. “It–it doesn’t make sense.”

A police car pulled up in front of the library. An officer stepped out and walked over to them, his eyes roaming up and down the street. “What seems to be the problem here?”

Iron Maiden’s breath hitched. The Hound raised an eyebrow at the officer in annoyance and squeezed her shoulder. “The Ripper abducted a girl,” he stated curtly. “What do you _think_ the problem is?”

“We are out looking for her,” the officer assured them quickly, “but knowing the Ripper–”

“Yes, yes, we’re all well aware of the Ripper’s _modus operandi_ ,” the Hound interrupted him irritably. “You don’t have to spell it out.”

“Knowing the Ripper,” the officer continued, giving him a hard look, before turning to Iron Maiden, a sympathetic look on his face. “you really do need to prepare yourself for the worst.”

Iron Maiden flinched, her eyes clenched shut.

The Hound hugged her protectively. “Until you find anything, there is still hope,” he told the officer, pursing his lips.

“There is always hope,” the officer agreed, though without any force behind the words. “We will certainly look for her – there is no way we are letting him get away with something like this. But the Ripper doesn’t leave many survivors.” He paused. “I am sorry, ma’am. Is there anything I can do?”

Iron Maiden looked up at him with wide eyes, tears still running down her cheeks. She opened her mouth, but shut it and mutely shook her head.

“I’ll get her home,” the Hound assured him. “Then I’ll be back to help you search.”

“Very well, Hero.” The officer tipped his hat and began to pace up and down in front of the library, studying the ground carefully. He knelt in front of the entrance steps, pulling a flashlight from its holster on his belt and passing it along the base of the stairs. Another police car pulled up behind the first one.

The Hound rose and held out a hand to Iron Maiden, who took it and allowed him to help her to her feet. He went to release her hand, but she clung to him tightly. If she needed him, he was here for her. He squeezed her hand gently while leading her down the street toward the Strand. “Would you like me to bring you back close to where you live?” he asked, stopping and turning to face her. “Once you’re safe, I’ll go out to search. I will find her,” he promised.

She shook her head curtly. “No, bring me to the workshop,” she told him, letting out a heavy breath. “It’s time for me to get back to it – Anne needs me to.”

He nodded, letting out a relieved sigh. “I’m glad to have my partner back.” Wrapping one arm tightly around her waist, he tossed his leash to catch around a balcony railing on the opposite side of the street. “Hold on tight, _mon Fer_.”

“Bri.”

“Hmm?” He looked at her curiously.

“My name is ‘Bridgette.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to serendipitous timing, this chapter turned into Part One of a three-part tie-in crossover spread across the other ongoing one-shot anthologies. The correct reading order for “The Dark of Night” is:
> 
> “The Darkest Nights” chapter 14  
> [“The Heroes of Paris: Patrol Logs” chapter 18](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732992/chapters/71227092/)  
> [“The Life and Times of the Heroes of Europe” chapter 15](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26771119/chapters/71227230)  
> “The Darkest Nights” chapter 15ff


	15. Chapter 15

Felix woke up with his neck bent forward at an odd angle, his legs elevated the slightest bit and hanging over the edge of something firm and unyielding. Quite unlike his own bed – or even the thin cot in his dorm room – this bed felt stiff, lumpy, and uncomfortable under him. The blanket draped over him felt scratchy and rough. The throw pillow under his head did nothing to soften the hard wood of what he finally realized must be the arm of a couch. He blinked once in the grey light filtering through the window on one side of the room and finally took in his surroundings: a roughly-furnished living room less than a third the size of his bedroom at the Manor. A television sat against the far wall on an entertainment centre, a couple of potted plants on either side of it. Below the window was a small scratched-up bookcase laden with books, many of which bore library markings, with a planter of fresh herbs resting atop it. Other than the couch he had slept on, there were a couple old wooden chairs and an end table on which Barkk was curled up asleep, her paws moving slightly as she dreamed.

With a frown, Felix rubbed the back of his neck and looked around in confusion, unsure what had woken him – or even really where he was. But he was certain this wasn’t his dorm room. The events of the previous night all ran together in his sleep-addled brain. From the traffic noises he could hear outside, he was somewhere in London, probably not too far from the Thames. How had he gotten here? A glance down at his watch showed that it was almost 7:30 in the morning. If he left right now, he could probably get back to the workshop and reach his first class in time. Although he hadn’t ever finished the essay that was due this morning.

The night before he had at least taken off his shoes; he slipped them back on and sat up, stretching his back to work out the ache that had set in from sleeping on the lumpy couch. Frowning, he looked around for a kitchen or bathroom to get a drink of water and rinse out his the stale taste left in his mouth because he hadn’t brushed his teeth before falling asleep. The living room opened onto a small, pristine kitchenette, and he got up to walk over, but before he could investigate, he heard again the sound that must have woken him up.

A quiet whimper echoed down the hallway to his left.

The previous night suddenly came back to him with a vengeance. He had carried Iron Maiden – “Bridgette,” she had told him her name was – back to her workshop, where she had activated her suit, a firm set to her jaw as she climbed inside it. The moment she was ready, the two of them had gone out and searched the city from top to bottom, running together in concentric circles, first around the area the Ripper had been targeting recently, then expanding out from there to cover the entire city. They had searched together for hours, long past dinner, long even past midnight. Long enough that Iron Maiden had needed to refuel her jetpack and replace her suit’s battery twice while he had continued to search on his own. They had stayed out so long in fact that Iron Maiden had nearly flown straight into the Tower of London out of sheer exhaustion on her final pass. That had been enough for him: although Bri had tried to stay at it longer, she had been in no position to protest when he had snatched her out of the sky and carried her back to the workshop. Despite her weak protests she had acquiesced, shut down her suit, and stumbled weakly out of it. Once he had detransformed, he had asked whether she wanted him to walk her back to her apartment building to be safe. Then, when they had arrived at the front door, she had clenched his hand tightly and begged him to come inside with her. After her flatmate’s abduction she didn’t want to be alone in the empty apartment.

So this was Iron Maiden’s – Bridgette’s – apartment. Felix stopped just in front of the hallway and looked down it nervously. Her bedroom must be at the end. He shouldn’t go down there; Bri’s privacy had been violated enough already, in a horrible fashion – and less than a week ago at that. She deserved to be safe in her own apartment. And after they had only just gotten back on speaking terms again twelve hours ago, he couldn’t do anything to jeopardise that. He turned back toward the kitchen, but froze. Another whimper, this time louder. At the sound, Barkk started awake and looked up at Felix. The Kwami let out a soft whine, a question in her eyes. Felix closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. He couldn’t just sit out here and listen to his friend cry, either. Finally he made his decision.

He followed the sound of Bri’s quiet moaning down the hallway, Barkk perched on his shoulder, her wagging tail pattering steadily against his shoulder blade. The first doorway he passed was open and led into a bathroom. The door opposite the bathroom was closed, but the sound came from beyond there. Finally, unsure what to expect, he arrived at the last two doors, one of which was slightly ajar. “Am I doing the right thing?” he whispered.

Barkk shrugged. “A Dog will always come when his partner needs him.”

“Yeah…” Felix slowly pushed it open, but hesitated in the doorway without entering.

The bed was pushed into the corner, a thrift store dresser at the foot. Clothing lay in strewn haphazardly around the room in small piles on the floor. Bri lay in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. She held the bed sheet in a death grip, her knuckles white. Her eyes were open and unfocused, staring up at the ceiling. She quivered and trembled in place, breathing erratically. “N–no,” she whimpered. “P–please.”

“Bridgette?” Felix called hesitantly, knocking on the door. Barkk flitted past him into the room, hovering directly above Bri.

“N–no…” Bri’s breathing became ragged.

“Bri!” he whisper-shouted as he knocked a little louder.

She cried out in terror, thrashing, writhing on the bed.

Unable to watch any longer, Felix crossed the room in three strides and knelt next to her bed. “Bri,” he called again, softer this time, placing his hand over one of hers, barely brushing her skin.

The effect was instantaneous. Bri turned on him, wild-eyed, wrenched her hand out of his weak grip, and swung her other arm at his head. Barkk phased through her arm as it passed, and Felix ducked, narrowly avoiding the haymaker, before he shouted, “Wait! Bri, it’s me! Wake up!”

She blinked, her eyes focusing on his face. Her brows knit together in confusion, her mouth opened slightly in an O. “Felix?” she whispered. “W–why are you here?”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, backing away a pace, out of her range, his hands held up in a placating manner. Barkk dropped down to nuzzle against Bri’s cheek, and she cupped a hand around the Kwami, whose tail wagged. “I was in the living room when I heard you. I–I didn’t want to come in here, but I couldn’t just listen to you… It sounded like you were having a nightmare.”

She swallowed hard and fixed her eyes on him, her mouth set in a frown. “Oh… you heard that?” she asked, flushing.

He nodded, running a hand through his hair guiltily. “I–I’m sorry. For coming in here while you were asleep and without your permission, I mean. And for–”

Bri sat up in the bed, her blanket slipping down off her shoulder, revealing the same shirt she’d worn the day before. She hugged the blanket tightly to her chest, leaned her head back against the wall, and closed her eyes. “I know,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I know.”

Barkk curled up on Bri’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing her cheek against Bri’s neck. “We’re here for you.”

Bri nodded, letting a breath out through her nose. “Thanks.”

Felix took a half-step back toward the door. “Um…” he began hesitantly. “Can I make you tea?”

“No.” She shook her head and looked up at him, her eyes betraying her vulnerability. “Please don’t leave. I… I don’t want to be alone.” She patted the bed beside her and slid over, closer to the wall, to make space for him to join her.

Felix nodded and sat down next to her on the edge of the bed, one foot on the floor. Bri leaned over and rested her cheek on his shoulder. Hesitantly, Felix put his hand on her shoulder. Her breath hitched. “Is this okay?” he asked, not daring to move.

She nodded jerkily. “I–I’m scared,” she admitted, letting out a heavy sigh. “When I arrived in London, I was just running away from Paris, wanted to leave everything behind. That included my _Papa_ , of course. But it also included my _Maman_ and my friends, too. After finding out about what _Papa_ was doing, I was ashamed of him. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was afraid that when people found out, they would blame me – say that I should have done something sooner.”

Barkk patted her shoulder. “I can imagine how difficult that was to do,” she told her. “I don’t think I would like just being all on my own like that.”

Felix tightened his grip on Bri’s shoulder. “I understand. I guess now you know what I meant about my uncle.” He let out a humourless chuckle. “I was only in Paris _once_ during Hawk Moth’s reign, and I was _still_ afraid that I could get caught up in the fallout from his unmasking. I was still civil toward Adrien, but that was it – at least at first.”

“When did it get better?” Bri whispered, trembling.

He shrugged. “It took some time, but we made up,” he confessed. “He had no more to do with his father’s misdeeds than you do with yours. And thanks to a few good decisions and some timely intervention from the Heroes of Paris, over a year later he’s largely escaped his father’s shadow. The same can be true for you.”

“Maybe.” She sounded doubtful.

“Definitely,” he assured her. “You won’t face it alone. And you’re not alone now, either.”

Barkk nodded. “You’re in my pack now, and a Dog’s pack sticks together!”

“That’s the thing,” Bri answered. “I _was_ on my own when I came to London. I wanted a clean break, so I barely answered any calls from my friends back home. I’ve seen my _Papa_ once since arriving, and only talked to my _Maman_ a few more times than that. I was alone in a new city and didn’t know anyone. But that was when I moved in here and met Anne. She’s more than just a flatmate, more than just a friend. She became like the sister I never had, and she never let me feel alone again – even after everything that happened… last week. But now _she_ ’s alone… with him. And I _know_ – too well – what must be happening to her–” Her voice cracked, and Felix rubbed her back comfortingly. She leaned into him and sniffled back a sob. “I know what might _have_ happened to her already. And _if_ she’s still alive, by now she probably wishes she was dead.”

“We’ll find her, Bri,” Felix promised, squeezing her shoulder. “And we _will_ bring the Ripper down. He will never hurt anyone again.”

She sniffled and looked up at him pleadingly. “How can you be so sure?”

His gaze hardened. “Because if we _fail_ , I don’t know what I’ll do.”


	16. Chapter 16

While Felix brewed tea in the kitchenette, Bri stumbled into the bathroom and took a shower. She closed her eyes as the hot water ran down her body, washing away the sweat and grease she had picked up from the previous night, though it could do nothing for the filth filling her imagination. Anne was out there with the same man who had attacked her, who had cut her, who had been moments away from murdering her and raping her. She could still feel the steel of his knife against her flesh. Absently she picked at the scabs on her chest; their constant itch served as yet another reminder of what had happened. She had almost died… but the itching sensation she felt meant that she was still alive. She was alive, and for now that had to be enough. And if she had lived through her ordeal, then maybe…

“Bri– um… Bridgette?” A knock on the bathroom door. “Everything okay in there?”

She turned off the water and opened her eyes, running a hand through her hair to push it out of her face. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she called, reaching for her towel.

It was at least thirty minutes later when Bri, dressed in her Ladybug sweatshirt and jeans, finally opened the bathroom door and came out to find Felix leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for her, an anxious look on his face. He handed her a steaming cup of tea as she sat down at the table before taking the seat opposite her. She held the cup tightly in both hands and closed her eyes, allowing the aroma to invade her nostrils and chase away the stench of the Ripper, the memory of which kept returning. She sighed softly. Whenever she had been anxious growing up, her mother had made her tea. Anne had done the same for her this year; when the tables had been turned, Bri had made her coffee.

“I hope it’s okay.” Felix sounded unsure. “Tea isn’t something I make very often.”

“It’s fine,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“I–actually got a little extra practice,” he admitted with a nervous chuckle. “That’s the fourth cup I made, since the others kept getting cool.”

Bri sipped the tea and stifled a sob, clenching her eyes shut tight. A soft weight pressed against her arm – Barkk.

“Hey,” Felix called gently, drawing her attention back to him. “We’re going to find her. Mother is still listening in to the police radio, and they have’t found anything yet. And if they haven’t found a body, it means she’s got to still be alive.”

 _Maybe alive… but probably wishing that she wasn’t._ Bri nodded. “I know.” She glanced at the time. “Don’t you have classes today?”

He shrugged. “This is more important.”

Bri sighed in relief. After yesterday, even more she didn’t want to be alone. Felix had found a box of Anne’s cereal in the pantry – normally Bri would never touch Anne’s food, though this morning she wasn’t here to object. Bri tried to work the tension out of her jaw at that thought. Although she wasn’t really hungry, she still forced herself to eat a bowl of the stuff dry. Felix sat quietly opposite her, staring into the distance. Barkk curled up between them on the table, slowly nibbling on a couple slices of turkey. “Are the Heroes of Paris going to help us?” Bri finally asked.

“Yes and no,” Felix replied, mouth set in a disappointed line. “ _Tante_ Emilie gave Mother the miraculous until we resolve this – one way or the other. She’s not as adept with it as _Tante_ is, but she spent all night searching for Anne.”

“Searching? You mean with a senti-guard?”

“Yes,” he answered, nodding, “but also by combing through the city’s emotions. But so far… nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

Felix shrugged. “It could mean anything. It could mean that she isn’t in Mother’s range – London is just on the edge of her range from home, after all. It could mean her emotions aren’t strong enough at the moment to stand out–”

“It could mean she doesn’t feel anything because there’s nothing _to_ feel…” Bri muttered. “Because she’s…”

“She’s going to be okay,” he insisted, placing his hand over hers.

“You don’t know that!” she screamed, eyes lighting up with fury and slapping his hand away. “My _sister_ is out there somewhere, and for all we know she’s already–she’s already– H–how can you be so… so _cavalier_ about this?”

“I’m _not_ trying to be flippant about it,” he assured her quietly, holding up a placating hand. “Yes, we don’t know if she’s alive, but until we know for sure that she isn’t, all we can do is work like she is.” He fell silent. “I’m sorry.”

She clenched her eyes shut tightly, hot tears sliding down her cheeks. “No–I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffling. “I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

He put his hand on the table next to hers, and she clutched it like a lifeline. “You don’t need to apologize for anything,” he told her firmly. “After this week, you have every right to be angry and yell.”

She nodded curtly and squeezed his hand. They sat in silence for a minute before she finally asked, “So… _are_ they going to help us look?”

He frowned and shook his head. “Not right now,” he admitted. “They want to help us, but they’re also worried about getting themselves overextended and having to solve every problem everywhere if they start investigating _everything_. But if we don’t find anything ourselves today, then Sent-Bee and Carapace are both going to come and help us search.”

“So it’s up to us.” Bri scoffed gloomily. “Of course it’s all on me.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “It isn’t all on you,” he assured her. “You aren’t alone. We’re partners: we help each other. I’m right here with you.”

She sighed in resignation. “Thanks, Pup.” Downing the last bit of her tea she stood up and went back to her bedroom to find the shoes she’d kicked off the night before. The outside hallway was deserted, sparing her any questions from the others on the floor as they left the apartment building and stepped out into the grey midmorning. Bri felt a few drops of rain land on her still-damp hair; Felix withdrew a collapsible umbrella from his bag and held it over them both. Bri extracted an earbud from one bracelet before hitting the button to open their communicator app. Amelie – la Paonne Deux – was already in it, as was Felix.

“Anything new, Mother?” Felix asked, his eyes wandering up and down the Strand before he led the way across the street and onto the college campus.

“Not yet,” la Paonne Deux replied, her voice dripping with irritation. “Scotland Yard has expanded its search perimeter to the edge of the metropolitan area; they are working their way back in toward the city boundary as we speak. The Metropolitan Police for their part is focused on the library – they’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb twice – but their crime lab has nothing. And my senti-swarm has found _nothing_. They’ve been at it for – what the hell time is it?”

“Nine-thirty,” Bri answered.

La Paonne Deux muttered a curse.

“Have you slept at all, Mother?” asked Felix, stifling a nervous laugh.

“There’s coffee,” she replied, speaking quickly. “Why didn’t we _already_ have a coffeemaker in the Hero Study?”

Felix pursed his lips and met Bri’s gaze. Leaning closer he whispered, “We didn’t even have a real coffeemaker in the _house_.” Louder he said, “Mother, perhaps you need to take a nap to recharge. We can search on our own for now, but we’ll let you know if we need help.”

La Paonne Deux was quiet. Felix gave Bri a nudge, a question in his eyes.

“It really is okay, Amelie,” Bri assured her. “You’ve done so much already.”

La Paonne Deux sighed heavily. “Oh, very well. But you two had better let me know if you need anything.”

Felix whispered, “Thank you,” as La Paonne Deux disconnected from the communicator. Bri nodded in resignation. “Mother has gotten far too good at pushing herself too far when she thinks I might need her help – especially since I became a hero.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry: I know family is a touchy subject for you.”

“No; it’s okay,” she told him, though without any force behind the words. She couldn’t exactly deny that little twinge of jealousy at seeing how close Felix and Amelie were. She had been that close with her father once; she still _wanted_ to have that close relationship with him, in spite of everything. And she couldn’t quite shake the guilty feeling that after telling Felix her name last night, the Heroes of Paris were even now tracking down her father to arrest him. She let out a breath. “It’s nice to see how much your _Maman_ loves and supports you.”

“She would do the same for you,” he pointed out earnestly.

Bri gave him a bewildered look. “What are you suggesting?”

Felix paled. “Not–not in any weird sense,” he protested. “It’s just, she’s been talking to _Tante_ lately, and _Tante_ mentioned how she’s sort of become a surrogate mother for some of the Heroes of Paris. And since all of us are working together so much, she wants to offer you the same support.”

Bri hummed in understanding. “Oh. That sounds… nice,” she admitted. She glanced around the campus as they approached the main building.

Barkk slipped surreptitiously out of Felix’s pocket and phased through the pavement at their feet, moving at a sharp angle toward the building’s basement. A minute later, the Kwami reappeared from the ground in front of them. “Nothing,” she reported, her ears drooping sadly.

“I suppose we couldn’t be so lucky right off,” Felix consoled her as she slipped back into her pocket.

“What’s the plan for our search?” asked Bri.

Felix frowned before handing her the umbrella and turning down the path to the left. “Split up to cover the campus and meet back here?”

Bri’s eyes widened and her heart rate spiked. She raced after him and grabbed his hand. He turned in surprise. “We only have the one umbrella,” she pointed out. “It would make more sense for us to stay together.”

“But we could cover more–” Felix froze, staring into Bri’s eyes. He swallowed and nodded, interlacing his fingers with hers. “Together it is.”

They spent the next hour searching the college campus but without any luck. Bri noticed a few surprised looks from the Engineering students milling about between classes; the girls in the apartment next to hers pointed at her and Felix, covering their mouths and giggling. She rolled her eyes in annoyance, gripping Felix’s hand tightly, the only thing keeping her grounded and together. Anne was out there somewhere – whether she was alive or dead was still unclear. Maybe she was still alive, but after Bri’s own experience, perhaps Anne would be better off if the Ripper _had_ already killed her. She could still feel the bite of the Ripper’s blade against her bare chest, tracing around her curves, smell his breath in her nostrils. His raspy voice echoed around her. She froze up, standing stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, and clenched her eyes shut tight.

“Bri?” Felix’s voice came to her as if from a great distance, muffled like she was underwater. “ _Mon Fer_?”

She blinked once and looked down at her hands, clenched into tight fists. Felix’s fingers were starting to turn purple from how tightly she held him. “Sorry,” she whispered, forcing her grip to loosen. She hoped she could blame the wetness around her eyes on the rain that was now beating a steady staccato on the umbrella above them.

“We’ll find her,” Felix promised, squeezing her hand back and putting his free hand on her shoulder. “We will stop the Ripper before he hurts anyone else.”

The image of the woman she had found last week, gutted and covered in blood, rose unbidden before Bri’s eyes. Then the woman’s blonde hair turned to red, and all Bri could see was Anne’s face, eyes staring sightlessly into the sky. Then the hair was brown, and it was Bri herself, chest ripped open, clothing torn to shreds, both her bracelets shattered. The pressure on her hand grew sharp, and she gasped. Felix stared into her face, his mouth twisted in worry. She gave her head a sharp jerk. “I know we will,” she agreed.

The rest of the day passed in a blur as they left the campus and began working their way east along the Strand, into the Ripper’s usual hunting ground. When Felix insisted that they stop to pick up something for lunch, Barkk flitted out of his pocket and dove into the hood of Bri’s sweatshirt, where the Kwami pressed against the back of her neck through the fabric, her tail wagging constantly. Bri took comfort from the Kwami’s presence, from the feel of Felix’s hand in hers, grounding her to the present. The swarm of senti-bees flew over their head several times as they covered the city from above. It wasn’t entirely on her. She wasn’t facing the monster alone this time. She was never going to be alone – not really. The rain picked up as noon turned to mid-afternoon and the sun, which had never emerged fully from behind the dark clouds, began to sink lower in the sky.

“We’re not going to find her,” Bri moaned as they walked along Fetter Lane back toward the Strand. The sun had finally set two hours ago, and the streetlamps had come on. “It’s been more than a day now, and nothing.”

Felix groaned in frustration, smacking his thigh. “If we just had some clue…” He sighed heavily. “It might be time to call in reinforcements.”

“Why couldn’t they help sooner?” Bri demanded.

Felix shrugged. “They have enough to deal with in Paris, I suppose. And half the point of giving me a miraculous was so I could take care of things on this side of the Channel.”

“Well, we haven’t exactly been doing such a _bang-up job_ of it lately…” she grumbled, rolling her neck against the tension that had been building in her muscles all day. She frowned: light reflected off the clouds above them. “What’s that about?” she wondered.

Felix followed where she was looking. “I’ve seen that light before – it’s from your campus library,” he told her.

“But why is it on now? The library closed an hour ago.”

“Doesn’t it just stay on all the time?” he asked in surprise.

“Not normally.” Bri furrowed her brows in contemplation. “But now that you mention it, Anne heard something unusual when we were in the lower floor earlier this week – only a day after the last Ripper attack, too.”

“Do you think there could be a connection?”

She shrugged and picked up her pace down the road toward her workshop, dragging him by the hand behind her. “There’s only one way to find out.”


	17. Chapter 17

_“Are you getting dressed up just for me?”_ Felix furrowed his brows – that was stupid. _“They say girls take longer to get ready…”_ He shook his head; he had no desire to _lose_ his head! _“You know, I prefer seeing you in either a mechanized battle suit or nothing.”_ Okay, that one was hilariously inappropriate under the circumstances. “Are you ready to go, _Fer_ Maiden?” he finally asked, foregoing all attempts at flirting and pushing off the wall he’d been leaning against, trying to stay out of her way as she moved around the suit in the small workshop. Barkk flitted around the suit behind her, watching Bri work.

“Just about there,” Bri replied, sliding into the suit and activating the sequence to close the back. “This wouldn’t have taken so long if I’d had time to run the diagnostics last night before we went back to the flat,” she pointed out as the motor came to life and she turned around.

“Can you honestly say you wouldn’t have made a mistake if you’d tried to do it last night?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because the Tower of London would beg to differ!”

“Yeah, well, you’d be stressed out, too, if your best friend was missing,” she retorted heatedly. “Are you going to transform, or what?”

“We’ll get her back!” Barkk chirped encouragingly, flying over to Iron Maiden and phasing her paw partway through one of Iron Maiden’s arms.

“Sorry.” Iron Maiden let out a breath, sounding mechanical through the helmet. “It’s been a long day.”

“I get it,” Felix told her before transforming. “I get the guilt – believe me. And I get the recriminations. I want to get this guy and save your flatmate, too. But I don’t want to watch you push yourself to the brink, either.” He patted her arm. “We’re in this together, right, partner?”

She nodded. “You and me, Pup.” The workshop door closed automatically behind them, and Iron Maiden scooped him up under the armpits. “This will be faster,” she told him, jumping into the air a moment before her jetpack activated.

As they skimmed over the housetops back toward the Maughan Library in the gloom, darting in and out of the fogbanks left behind by the day’s rain, the Hound couldn’t help remembering the night before when _he_ had been the one carrying _her_ back to the workshop to get her suit; now the tables had turned on him. It was a strange sensation to be carried through the air with no control over where he was or where he went. But he had trusted Iron Maiden before; he could trust her even more now. Less than two minutes later Iron Maiden set them down in front of the library’s main entrance.

“How do we get in?” he asked, looking around anxiously. “Just smash the door in?”

She hummed pensively. “I suppose I _could_ blast the door with my cannon,” she replied slowly, “but that would probably be overkill. And besides, what if we’re wrong?” She raised her right hand and pointed her finger at the space between the doors. A thin wire extruded from the fingertip, and she wiggled it in the space until the lock bar disengaged. Carefully she pulled the door open and led the way inside.

“So are you enough of a nerd to develop that _just_ to get in some more study time?” the Hound asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“What? No,” she scoffed. “I… may have added it so I could sneak into the Engineering building to work late on my projects,” she admitted sheepishly.

“Nerd.” He clutched his leash tightly as Iron Maiden turned right down the long interior hallway, the headlamp built into her helmet providing the only illumination. With his miraculous-enhanced vision he could make out doorways leading into darkened rooms on either side, doors behind which anything could be lurking. Too faint for ordinary hearing, mice scampered through the walls. Iron Maiden stopped abruptly just before the end of the hallway and turned into a wide open room with rounded walls. Together they walked over to the far side of the room, where one of the table lamps was still turned on – this must have been the source of the light they had seen from outside. “Is this it?” he asked, pulling the chain to turn off the light.

Nothing happened.

“Huh.” Iron Maiden stared at the lamp for a long minute. “This lamp has always been a little weird,” she commented eventually. “I kept meaning to pull it apart and check the connections, but I just never did.” She cocked her helmet to the side and turned a slow circuit to examine the whole room. “The EM is wrong. The lamp isn’t even connected to any switches in here.”

“Didn’t you say Anne heard something downstairs?” asked the Hound. “Could there be a connection _there_?”

“The wire does go down through the floor,” she reported, kneeling to trace it with her finger. Briskly she strode out of the room, the Hound hustling to keep up with her. “We were in the cafe when she heard it, so we should check there first.”

The doorway next to the round room opened into a stairwell, and Iron Maiden jumped over the railing, using her jetpack to halt her descent a meter from the floor. The Hound dropped over the side and landed in a crouch, leash already up and spinning to his side. Through the walls he could still hear the sound of mice scurrying along, and under that a slow rhythmic pulse that could have been the library’s dehumidifying system. Iron Maiden left the stairwell and walked down the hallway to the cafeteria room that took up half of one side of the lower ground floor. She turned around slowly, her helmet whirring as she scanned the room. “Nothing.”

The Hound closed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and focused on his hearing. The sound of Iron Maiden’s suit was almost deafening in the silence; he tuned it out. The scurrying inside the walls was still there; he tuned that out, too. And below it all he could hear rustling sounds coming through the vents, almost as if something were being moved by a breath of wind. “I hear something,” he finally reported, opening his eyes. He dropped to his hands and knees next to the closest vent and looked, but he could see nothing. Even right next to it, he didn’t feel any air moving. “A pity we don’t have Multiplice with us: she could probably fit through the vents to investigate this for us.”

“What about Barkk?” Iron Maiden suggested.

He nodded. “Barkk, Ears up.” A tan light covered him, and Barkk materialized directly in front of his face. Quickly he fished a package of dried beef out of his pocket and held a piece up for her to eat. As she bit off tiny chunks, he quickly explained what they needed her to do. “I don’t like being de-transformed when we’re looking for the Ripper,” he finished, shivering, “but this might be our best bet.”

“You can count on me, Felix!” Barkk assured him, wagging her tail excitedly and licking his palm. “I’ll be back sooner than you can blink!” With that she phased directly through the floor and disappeared into the ventilation shaft.

Felix stared at the floor quietly, holding his breath.

“It’s sweet that she’s so affectionate,” Iron Maiden observed, opening her helmet.

He smiled fondly. “It is rather difficult to be lonely when you have a Kwami around,” he agreed, straightening up next to her.

Bri hummed pensively. “That is… nice,” she admitted. “It’s nice to have someone for company.”

“We’ll get her back,” he assured her firmly. “You aren’t alone.” He smirked. “But in the meantime do you need _me_ to lick your hand and wag my tail for you?”

She gave him a deadpan look. “Cute.”

He took her gauntleted hand in his own and held it up to his lips. “I mean it: you aren’t alone in this. Whatever happens, I’ve got your back.”

She nodded. “Thanks, Pup.” Her lips turned down in a frown as she turned away to examine a vending machine against the near wall. A heavy sigh escaped her lips.

Felix watched her closely. It didn’t take a mind reader to realize that she was still imagining all those terrible possibilities. “So are you interested in any sports, _mon Fer_?” he asked.

She blinked and turned on him in surprise. “I played football growing up. My _papa_ is a big fan of Saint-Germain; he brought me to a game a couple years ago.” She smiled wistfully. “We sat in the upper deck, and all the people down below looked like ants.”

Felix hummed. “You really _can_ see everything from up there, can’t you?”

“You’ve been?”

He nodded. “Once, last month.” He let out a snort. “I wasn’t there with your _father_ , but I was there with his partner!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Was the stadium still standing when you were done?”

“Despite our best efforts, yes!” he joked, eliciting a tentative smile from Bri.

Barkk floated out of the wall next to them at that moment, and Felix turned to find the Kwami with an unaccustomed serious look in her eyes. “I found them,” she reported breathlessly before turning to fly out of the cafe, waving urgently for them to follow. “They’re below the round room. But we have to hurry!”

Felix’s footsteps pounded along the tiles behind Iron Maiden, following the Kwami out of the cafe and down the hallway back to the stairwell. No sooner had they entered the stairwell than the Kwami phased into the wall directly below the stairs around knee height. Even with his normal hearing, Felix could hear a mechanical crunching noise as a section of the floor shifted and a trapdoor dropped open. Barkk emerged from the wall and flew down into the opening, followed by Iron Maiden and Felix. Unlike the rest of the library, the stairs down which they climbed were of rough-hewn stone, worn smooth by centuries of use. The walls around them were of similar stone, smoothed down by countless hands brushing against them over the years, dust clinging to the uneven edges after sitting so long in disuse and without air. No lights were visible apart from the beam coming from Iron Maiden’s headlamp; the darkness seemed to close in behind Felix as they descended lower into the earth. Just when he thought they couldn’t go any lower, finally his feet found level ground – hard-packed earth.

“What is this place?” he whispered, placing his hand on Iron Maiden’s shoulder for guidance as he followed right behind her down the tight corridor.

“I–I don’t know,” she whispered back. “It’s _old_ , whatever it is…” She paused as her light settled on the stone wall to one side, illuminating an image of what appeared to be a woman in front of a tree holding a basin. “I–I recognize this,” Iron Maiden murmured. “I’m pretty sure I saw it in one of Anne’s books. I think it might be either Celtic or Pictish.”

“That would probably make it older than London itself,” Felix commented, eyes wide in surprise. He fell silent as voices echoed down the hallway. Beyond Iron Maiden he could just make out flickering orange light emanating from somewhere around the corner. Iron Maiden jerked forward, but Felix grabbed her tightly and pulled her back. Putting his lips as close to her helmet as he could, he hissed, “We have to be careful – we can’t spook them!”

“But–”

“Shh!” Cautiously they made their way down the hallway, the light growing brighter with each step. At last Iron Maiden turned off her headlamp as they halted to the side of a doorway barely larger than Iron Maiden herself. Felix poked his head around the corner over her shoulder.

They looked into a large circular room with an earthen floor and uncut stone walls, about as large around as the room in the library directly above them, with wooden torches set in sconces built into the walls to provide the light. A massive pyre of freshly-cut wood stood in the centre of the room, taking up most of the space. Swirling patterns of a dark reddish-brown were visible in the dirt around and beneath the pyre. What could only be human body parts ringed the pyre. The Ripper himself stood to one side of the room within the ring of organs, holding a torch and looking up at something in the centre of the pyre. And in the middle of the pyre, tied to a wooden post, was Anne.


	18. Chapter 18

“Anne!” Iron Maiden’s heart stopped, her eyes widening in shock on seeing the scene in the torch-lit room. Without another thought she charged around the corner into the room, her shoulder slamming into the doorframe with a rending screech. The two sets of eyes in the room immediately turned toward her.

“Help me!” screamed Anne, fear plain in her voice, straining desperately against the ropes binding her to the stake protruding from the centre of the woodpile. But for as much as she struggled, her arms remained tied fast.

Iron Maiden lunged toward the wooden pyre, her eyes fixed on her still-alive flatmate. The enormous, spread out pile of wood crunched under her feet. Before she could get beyond the outermost edge of the pile, however, her attention was drawn to the Ripper, who had raised a bone-handled knife. The same knife that had haunted her nightmares for the last week. “You will not interfere!” the Ripper shouted in a manic fury, flickering torch light dancing across his wild eyes. “The sacrifice must be offered! I have come too far to fail now!”

“The police are en route to your location,” La Paonne Deux reported briskly over the communicator. “I’m sending you a senti-guard, but it won’t be there for a while.”

Iron Maiden’s eyes widened in terror on catching sight of the man who had lived in her dreams for a week. His tangled, greasy hair spread out in a wild mane around his head. The clothing he wore looked not to have been changed in days – he had even worn that same shirt when he assaulted her! She could already smell his rank stench, despite the filtration system in her helmet that should have blocked it. Her limbs refused to move. She could only stare in horror at her attacker as he strode toward her. All her earlier confidence evaporated in the face of the dead look in his eyes. He was going to finish the job on her!

“Barkk, Ears back!” There was movement from behind Iron Maiden. Light flashed behind her, and the Hound leapt out, landing between her and the Ripper. “Time for round two, asshole!” he shouted, leash cracking in the air overhead like a whip. “This time there’s no way in _hell_ I’m leaving the job unfinished! Doggedness!”

Iron Maiden shook her head, pushing back the fear and panic that had gripped her on seeing the Ripper. Taking a deep breath, she tried to still her racing heart. She wasn’t alone; she had her partner with her. She could do this.

“No!” the Ripper bellowed, his voice wild with derangement, sidestepping to avoid the lashing leash. “You can’t be here already! I’m not ready yet.” He grabbed his hair and tugged. “This is all wrong! It’s happening too soon! I haven’t completed the ceremony!”

The Hound dove at him, and the Ripper threw his torch at the pyre before stretching out his knife. The torch landed on the edge of the wood, which began to smoke and burn as the flames caught in the kindling. Iron Maiden gasped as the fire began to spread, expanding along the periphery of the pyre, surrounding the larger logs, Anne still tied up in the centre. Thick black smoke billowed up and flooded the room. Anne screamed again, coughing. Iron Maiden’s attention was torn between her flatmate, still tied to a pole in the centre of the now-flaming pyre, and her partner. The Hound ran headlong into the knife, which turned aside on his miraculous suit, and drove his fist into the Ripper’s gut, eliciting a pained grunt. Iron Maiden turned her attention back to Anne.

“Hold on!” she called, wading through the thigh-deep pile of wood as the fire spread all around her. “Send fire also!” she shouted into the communicator. The heat from the flames worked its way through her suit; sweat started dripping down her back and legs.

“Already done!” la Paonne Deux assured her, her voice calm and soothing. “You can do this, sweetie.”

Iron Maiden gave a jerky nod inside her helmet. Desperately she shifted through all the features on her suit, looking for one that could put out the fire, but nothing! Anne’s screaming took on a higher pitch as the flames crept ever closer, crackling and popping as the green wood slowly burned only a couple metres from her legs. Smoke billowed, thick and black, hanging by the ceiling and descending to fill the room. Out of options, Iron Maiden pushed herself forward, holding her arms in front of her and pouring out a continuous stream of energy from both cannons to cut a path through the wood. The stone ceiling over her head was too low for her to employ her jetpack. The flames were mounting higher and higher, all around her.

The wood beneath Iron Maiden’s feet shifted, as though moved from below. A green sprout appeared through the wood and instantly caught fire. A sapling appeared as if bursting from the ground and spread its branches before it could catch on fire. One branch of the sapling whipped out and pushed the wood pile apart in front of her. Iron Maiden quickly stepped into the cleared space before the sapling ignited, the water within it hissing as it boiled.

The Ripper and the Hound were locked in a furious battle on the far side of the room, dancing around on the edge of the pyre, flames licking at their ankles. The Hound tangled the Ripper up in his leash and threw him up to crash into the ceiling with a rumble, unleashing a spray of dust that filled the room, choking the others and turning the flames to different colours. The Hound released the Ripper, who tumbled down on his back onto the edge of the fire. He regained his feet almost immediately, but Iron Maiden could see flames licking across the back of his shirt and pants. The ends of his hair released acrid smoke. He leapt out of the fire, knife held in one hand, a crazed look in his eyes, and sprang at the Hound’s head. The Hound ducked, sending the Ripper caroming over his back and into the stone wall. The Ripper shook his head once and threw his knife at the Hound’s head. However, the Hound flicked his leash out and deflected the knife away, ricocheting off the ceiling before the hilt embedded into the side wall. A tree root protruded from the ground beneath the Ripper’s feet, and he stumbled over it before falling to his knees.

Iron Maiden pushed further into the fire, trying to get ahead of the line of flames working its way steadily through the pyre from the outside toward where Anne was still trapped. Smoke had nearly filled the room; Iron Maiden shifted to her infrared view only to be overwhelmed by the heat coming off the flames. Anne was barely visible through the smoke, still struggling desperately to free herself from the rope binding her arms behind her back. The knots were so tight, however, that she only succeeded in turning herself to the side. Iron Maiden narrowed her eyes and adjusted the settings on her arm cannon. “Don’t move!” she bellowed, raising her arm and aiming carefully. Anne stilled instantly, and a thin beam of energy cut cleanly through the rope tying Anne’s wrists, which unravelled and fell to the ground.

She couldn’t watch what happened next, however, as an anguished scream reverberated through the room from where the Hound was still locked in battle against the Ripper.

His hair by this time entirely engulfed, his skin charred black, fuelled by desperation, the Ripper lunged at the Hound, knocking him to the ground and landing atop him. “If I’m going, I’m at least taking you with me, you son of a bitch!” the Ripper shrieked, grabbing the Hound around the throat, the burnt flesh peeling away from his fingers to reveal the bones and tendons beneath.

“Like hell you are!” screamed Iron Maiden, shooting her grappling hook at him, catching it around his torso, and retracting it, pulling him off of the Hound. A tree branch shot out of the ground at the Ripper’s feet and tripped him. He stumbled, and Iron Maiden swung him back around to slam into the wall. The Ripper let out a guttural yell as the blade of his own knife emerged from his chest, blood blossoming from the spot and dripping down over his burning shirt, trying and failing to extinguish the flames. A pair of tree roots pushed their way through the undressed stone wall and wrapped around the Ripper’s outstretched arms, pinning him in place. His head haloed by his own burning hair, his mouth opened in a final anguished scream as another root looped around his neck and pulled tight.

“What the hell is going on here!?!” the Hound wheezed, covering his mouth with his arm and coughing weakly against the smoke that had by now almost entirely filled the room. He spun his leash in a tight circle, pushing the flames and smoke away from himself.

Iron Maiden shook her head and turned, finally able to see the centre of the room where Anne had been. Her jaw dropped.

Anne stood where she had been tied to the post, but was now wreathed in a thicket of green vines which continued to sprout and grow even as the flames licked at their outer edge. As Iron Maiden watched, the vines spread and shifted to form a tiny opening, and Anne ran out of their midst just as the vines succumbed to the fire. Iron Maiden shot her grappling hook, caught it around Anne’s chest right below her armpits, and pulled her out of the fire to catch her, holding her tightly in her arms. Throwing her over her shoulder, she carried Anne out of the room with the Hound bringing up the rear, still using his leash as a fan to hold the fire and smoke at bay behind them.

“We need to put out the fire!” shouted the Hound, pulling the rough stone door shut once they were all out of the room. “Otherwise, the whole building could go! But without water, our only bet is to cut off the oxygen.”

“I don’t have foam or anything like that to seal it,” Iron Maiden groaned, setting Anne on her feet.

“I–I think I can do something,” gasped Anne. She closed her eyes and flexed her fingers, and vines began growing out of the bare earth in front of the door, growing thick and fast and filling in all the cracks around the doorframe.

Iron Maiden examined the door closely with her helmet’s built-in scanners, looking for any trace of air leaking into the room beyond, but found nothing. With a quick calculation she announced, “It should burn itself out in a few hours from lack of oxygen, unless it burns through all its fuel sooner.” She let out a breath and finally turned to take a closer look at Anne.

She still wore the same clothes from the day before, the tips of her hair were singed, and she was covered in soot, but miraculously she appeared to be in one piece. Iron Maiden threw her arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I was so worried about you, girl! You were gone more than a day!”

Anne hesitantly patted Iron Maiden’s back. “Um… I’m sorry but… do I know you?”

Iron Maiden laughed in relief, held Anne out at arm’s length, and opened her helmet. “It’s me!”

Anne threw her arms around her neck and sobbed with joy. “I should have guessed! I thought I would never escape that room, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about; my sister’s a savage superhero!” She sighed as Bri squeezed her more tightly. “You’ve no idea how glad I am to see you, girl,” she whispered.

“Likewise,” Bri whispered back, finally allowing herself to shed the tears she had been holding back for more than 24 hours. “I thought I’d never see you again. You’re okay?”

Anne nodded jerkily. “Yeah.” She was quiet. “He… actually took pains _not_ to hurt me – said the ritual required an ‘unblemished sacrifice’ or some such nonsense.” She fell silent and sniffled before clearing her throat and letting go of Bri. “So I suppose _this_ was your ‘special project’?” she asked, gesturing to the suit. “Or was it _him_?” She jerked her head in the Hound’s direction, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “When you said your fella would be dressed as a dog for Halloween, I didn’t know you meant it quite so literally!”

The Hound arched an eyebrow at the two before he de-transformed in a flash of light and held out his hand to Anne. “Felix,” he introduced himself, shaking her hand firmly. “I’m glad to meet you… again.”

Bri rolled her eyes. “The Hound is my _friend_ ,” she explained. “He’s the one who found me after I was attacked and who brought me home. And he helped me find you.”

“So what the bloody hell happened in there?” Felix demanded, cocking his head in confusion.

“I–I’m not sure,” admitted Anne, frowning. “I’m pretty sure he was trying to carry out some ritual to sacrifice me to Danu so he would get superpowers – or at least I think that’s what he was saying. He was speaking the ritual in horribly-inflected Celtic, so I could hardly tell _what_ he was trying to say half the time.”

“Huh,” observed Felix. “I guess it didn’t exactly work out for him.”

“Not so much,” Anne agreed, shaking her head.

“But what was with the plants in there?” Bri asked. “Was that you?”

“I… think so?” Anne answered, furrowing her brows. “I mean, _something_ must’ve happened during his ritual. It’s like I can hear them speaking to me somehow now, but I can’t really explain it…”

Felix shook his head ruefully. “How is this _not_ the craziest thing I’ve ever heard?”


	19. Chapter 19

The next day, Felix arrived at the Strand House a little after lunch. The previous night they had given statements to the police – Barkk had protested half-heartedly about transforming yet again so they could do so – and then he had accompanied Anne and Iron Maiden back to the workshop so Bri could shed her suit, and from there to their apartment building. Only once the two girls were safely inside did he finally return to the workshop to take the portal back to the Manor. Too exhausted to even think about doing anything else, he had simply passed out into his bed, still wearing the same clothes from the day before. He had woken up, late and smelling of smoke, showered, and went downstairs to find his mother sitting in the dining room with Duusu and Barkk. She had immediately run over to hug him before plying him with pastries. Then after breakfast he had checked his phone and found Bri’s invitation.

He stood awkwardly outside the apartment building, waiting for them to come out. It was funny: he had stopped on the roof of this building so many times while patrolling in the last week, all without realizing just how close his partner was. He closed his eyes to soak up the bright sunlight streaming down on him. “Everything feels so much brighter today, Barkk,” he whispered.

The Kwami, hidden in his breast pocket, whispered back, “The darkest nights always give way to the brightest days!”

“That they do!” he agreed as the apartment building’s door opened.

“What do what?”

He opened his eyes to find Bri standing in the doorway in the Ladybug sweatshirt they had given her almost exactly a week earlier, her hair dyed bright orange. He cocked his head in surprise; this might be the first time he’d actually noticed Bri to be wearing makeup; normally he only saw her with grease smudges on her face from working on her suit. Anne stood behind her in a dark green jacket and, apart from a few scratches on her face from stray branches, looking none the worse for wear after her ordeal. “Something Barkk said,” he explained with a small smile.

Bri hummed. “Well, shall we?”

Felix nodded and fell in beside Bri, Anne on the opposite side from him. “Where are we going?”

Bri shrugged. “I thought we could check out some of the Halloween decorations along the river,” she explained. “Now that the Ripper is gone, the City decided to lift the curfew for tonight, and Instagram made it sound like people are planning an all-night celebration!”

He allowed himself a smile. The darkness was gone: the Ripper was no more. If that wasn’t cause for celebration, he didn’t know what was! “Are you planning to dress up for Halloween?” he asked as they made their way down a couple blocks before turning to walk by the Thames. He wagged his eyebrows suggestively. “Because I would _beagle_ -ad to give you some ideas!”

Bri gave him a look. “Down, boy.”

“Well,” Anne began slowly, an amused lilt to her voice, “I _was_ going to dress up as a Druidess this year… but I suppose that won’t work now, will it?” Bri cocked her head in confusion. Anne smirked and ran her hand along a tree, which abruptly put out a tiny new sprig. “Halloween’s supposed to be about dressing up as something you’re _not_ ; I can’t exactly be dressing up as what I _am_ , now, can I?” she explained, giggling.

Bri laughed, a light and carefree sound that Felix hadn’t expected to hear again after the past week. He glanced down in surprise as her hand brushed against his, though she didn’t look at him. “In that case, you could always just grow yourself a laurel wreath, put on a bed sheet, and say you’re one of those Roman colonists you’re always talking about,” she suggested.

Anne hummed dubiously. “Dressing up in a toga doesn’t sound all that exciting,” she pointed out.

Bri shrugged. “I never even picked anything out, so…”

“I still say you’d look cute with floppy dog ears!” Anne wagged her eyebrows cheekily.

“Are you actually planning to go trick-or-treating?” asked Felix. He couldn’t really remember the last time _he_ ’d done that – probably before his father died.

Bri shook her head. “No, it’s more like our floor is having a Halloween party tonight and invited one of the local primary schools to trick-or-treat in a couple hours,” she explained.

“Ooh, we should definitely get a pumpkin to put outside!” Anne suggested eagerly, nodding to the row of carved gourds along the riverfront.

“Couldn’t you just grow one?” asked Bri wryly.

Felix stared at the one on the end in confusion, an oblong squash with a terrifying face carved into it and a knife sticking out of the top. “What’s with that one?” he wondered.

Bri frowned. “Maybe it’s supposed to be the Ripper,” she guessed, shuddering. “That’s no more than he deserved.” Felix took her hand and gave a small squeeze. She nodded at him and returned the gesture, letting out a breath. She snorted. “If I were going to carve a pumpkin, that’s probably what _I_ would want to do,” she observed humourlessly.

Felix smirked. “No need; you already carved up the real thing last night!”

She smiled in satisfaction. “That we did,” she agreed, nodding.

“That was pretty savage last night,” Anne commented, her gaze drifting between them. “I don’t think I said it enough, but thank you. For finding me, I mean.”

Bri released Felix’s hand and wrapped her arms around Anne’s shoulders. “Of course!”

Anne chuckled and returned the hug. “And after last night, I guess I don’t need to be afraid of walking to and from work,” she observed.

“No, just of the losers who would bug you _at_ work,” Bri joked, raising an eyebrow at Felix meaningfully.

“Hey, don’t look at _me_!” he protested. “ _I_ passed obedience school!”

Bri snorted. “Right…”

Anne frowned at them in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Bri tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “So do you remember a couple weeks ago? The jackass with the birthday who kept on getting handsy? You didn’t stop ranting about him for a week?”

“Seriously?” Felix muttered.

“Yeah…” Anne replied slowly, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Bri nodded toward Felix.

Anne’s jaw dropped.

“It wasn’t me!” he insisted, raising his hands. “It was Charlie.”

“That asshole was one of your friends!?!” Anne demanded. “He nearly earned himself a lifetime ban!”

“Trust me,” Felix assured her. “There’s is no way I’m bringing them back down to your pub any time soon.” _Although_ , he mused to himself, _they_ do _have a way of making me look better by comparison!_

Anne made an amused noise. “So really, I guess when I said I wanted to meet your ‘Mister Project,’ I’d already met him!” she observed, arching an eyebrow.

Felix stared at her in confusion.

Anne smirked. “So how long have you two known each other _really_?” she asked, giving Felix an intense stare.

He shrugged. “We met almost three months ago when I showed up to try and stop a bank robbery and found Iron Maiden mixing it up with Mecha-Man,” he replied. “We worked together a couple times that week before we decided to partner up, even if that just meant sharing patrols on occasion while hunting for the Ripper.”

Anne hummed in surprise, eyes widening, and trailed her hand along a bush which started to put out blooms. She turned an accusing look on Bri. “Huh. I thought this _‘boyfriend’_ was more of a long-term thing,” she teased.

Felix furrowed his brows in confusion.

Bri flushed. “I never _had_ a boyfriend,” she retorted. “When you thought I had a boyfriend I was going to see, it was only ever the suit.”

Anne giggled. “And yet you described him to me, and from your description, I’m pretty sure I’m looking at him!” she commented, grinning knowingly. “Can you tell me you _weren’t_ describing Felix?”

Bri rolled her eyes. “Of course I was describing Felix,” she retorted, her lips twisting up in amusement. “I had to tell you _something_! And that way I could keep my story straight.”

“Uh huh.” Anne gave her a dubious look. “Whatever you say, girly.” She smirked mischievously. “Just remember, if anything _does_ happen, just put a sock on your door!”

Bri scoffed. “There’s pretty much no chance of that!”

Felix raised an eyebrow at her, and she flushed. He grinned, his hand brushing against hers. “I’m just glad to see you so happy today – after the last week, I didn’t know if I ever would again. It’s… nice to have my partner back.”

“Yeah…”

“So you’ve _got_ to tell me about that savage suit of yours, girl!” Anne enthused. “Where did it come from?”

Bri grinned eagerly and jumped into an animated description of how she had first begun building the suit only a couple days after they had met that summer, using parts and ideas she’d been toying with for years. As she spoke, Felix began to get lost in his own thoughts while looking over the slapdash Halloween decorations strewn across the sidewalk above and around them. A string of cats cut from black paper hung from one light post to the next, and Felix frowned: a celebration of _his_ victory, and they had Adrien’s animal. To be expected. He glanced down in surprise as once more Bri’s hand brushed against his without pausing her story about stopping a mugger two weeks ago. Turning from his surroundings to his company, he examined Bri’s profile as she described the sensation of flying with her jetpack, her eyes lighting up animatedly. She wasn’t close to the type of girl he was usually attracted to – she spoke her mind and wouldn’t hesitate to tell him off – but maybe that was a good thing. At the same time, they had only just started to get comfortable in their partnership. And after her experience of the last week, was she interested in anything more than friendship?

“Felix?”

He blinked and found two sets of eyes staring at him. “What?” he asked dumbly. He thought he detected a trace of amusement in Bri’s eye, and coughed. “I’m sorry. Yes, _mon Fer_?”

“Care to add anything?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

He shook his head. “Just that there’s something oddly disconcerting about being carried around like a sack of potatoes when you are flying around!”

Bri stifled a giggle.

“But all the same,” he went on, “there’s nothing quite like doing this hero thing with someone else.” He bumped her shoulder with his. She bumped him back, and they slowly continued along the riverfront. “You know,” he began, “the Heroes of Paris have a pretty big team…”

Bri raised an eyebrow at him. “And?”

“And does this mean we have a third member now?” he asked, nodding toward Anne. “We could use the help if we have another super-criminal show up when Mother doesn’t have the miraculous.”

“I suppose that’s up to her,” Bri commented, turning toward Anne and raising an eyebrow.

Anne started in surprise. Instead of responding right away she knelt next to a barren flowerbed in which someone had placed a pair of witch’s boots, and put her hand on the soil. A single flower grew between her fingers and she carefully plucked it, brushing off the dirst. Straightening up she started walking, with the other two following. “I suppose I could do it,” she agreed, smirking. Behind Bri’s back she poked Felix and handed him the flower. He furrowed his brows at her, and she nodded insistently in Bri’s direction. He nodded in realization. “But if I’m going to be a hero now, what does that mean?”

Felix smirked. “The simple answer is that we don’t have to go on solo patrols anymore!”

“I bet that’s something you’ll appreciate, Pup,” Bri commented. “No more worrying about that Acolyte guy going after you.”

Felix nodded seriously and held out the flower. “I never really had the chance to thank you for kicking that asshole’s ass the other day,” he noted. “So…”

Bri took the flower and inhaled its scent. “Why thank you… _Anne_ ,” she replied, giving her roommate a deadpan look.

Anne looked back at her with an innocent expression. “I have no idea what you mean, girl.”

Bri snorted. “Uh huh. Still…” She took Felix’s hand. “You were there for me; I was there for you. That’s what friends are for, right?”

He nodded and squeezed her hand in return. “That’s what friends are for.”


	20. Epilogue

“So be honest: what do you think of this ‘more teammates’ thing?” It was Halloween night, and Bri had begged out of the flat’s party a little early to meet Felix for patrol. Now they were tracing lazy circles around the city, looking for any late-night revellers who might let their Halloween celebration get out of hand – quite the change from all their previous patrols together, when they had been laser-focused on the hunt for the Ripper. The cloud cover was a little higher tonight than it had been for weeks, giving Iron Maiden plenty of altitude to work with, though the clouds and smog still obscured the stars and moon from sight.

“What do you mean?” the Hound asked. Through the communicator she could hear his grunt of exertion, the whipping of his leash through the air as he swung from one building to the next.

“I’m just curious.” Iron Maiden put on a burst of speed and flew up to hover above the obelisk in Trafalgar Square, her jetpack holding her suspended in midair as she turned slowly to observe the whole city. It had been on the Square’s steps, a little over two months earlier, when she and the Hound had agreed to team up to protect London. She smiled, watching the people wandering around below her. Pinpricks of light showed where the trick-or-treaters were still out going door-to-door. Others were making their way out to the bars and clubs – far more than there had been a week ago. “Considering that Anne’s my best friend, I couldn’t be happier that she’s with us, but you don’t know her as well as I do.”

The Hound hummed thoughtfully. She could pick him out as a darker shape moving across the rooftops on the east side of the city. “That is true,” he admitted. “I am glad to have her on our side, of course,” he quickly added, “but her powers are new.”

“You weren’t that accustomed to _your_ powers when we first met,” she pointed out. “Which was _my_ first time out, too, by the way.”

“Fair,” he agreed. “But I had some training from the Heroes of Paris to fall back on. Anne hasn’t had anything like that.”

“Are you suggesting we let _them_ train her?” Movement along the river on White Lion Hill drew her attention. Iron Maiden cut out her jetpack and dropped almost to the ground before activating it again and rocketing straight toward the Thames, skimming along just above the traffic.

“I’m sure they would be happy to assist,” Amelie noted over their communicators. “Emilie has said they are trying to be as supportive of their ‘allies’ as they can be.”

“Perhaps,” the Hound acknowledged. “But I think it’s something _we_ should do for ourselves. After all, this is supposed to be _our_ team. And we need to be able to work together.”

Iron Maiden hummed in contemplation as she landed on the sidewalk between three children who were fighting over a bag of candy. “Now what seems to be the problem here?” she asked.

The oldest, a boy in a wizard hat, stared at her in surprise but pointed at the girl with fairy wings and said, “She took my candy!”

“Nuh uh!” the fairy retorted, sticking out her tongue at him.

“You did take his Twix,” the other boy replied, this one wearing a blue hat with ox horns and carrying a cattle prod.

“Is that _really_ cause for fighting?” asked Iron Maiden, folding her arms and arching an eyebrow at them from behind her helmet.

“Um…”

She rolled her eyes and reached into a pouch on her leg. “Tell you what, I have a bunch of candy here. How about if I give you each a few pieces of candy and you call it good? Okay?”

The wizard nodded, wide-eyed, and she dropped a handful of candy into his hands.

The fairy beamed up at her. “Thank you…”

“‘Iron Maiden’,” she told them.

“Thank you, Iron Maiden,” the three children recited.

She grinned and shot back into the air. “Now you kids stay safe and have a Happy Halloween!” she called, rocketing back around to continue her circuit. By now the Hound had reached the Thames and was making his way back along the river. “I don’t think _I_ ’ll have any trouble working with my best friend,” she noted. “The last time we really had an argument was our second month living together, when we couldn’t decide what to watch on the telly. But maybe it _would_ be good for the two of you to patrol together more.”

“So how about if we split our time,” he suggested. “We can each take her out a couple times a week, and then we’ll go out together a couple nights.”

She snorted. “You think we’re going to be ‘going out,’ Pup?” she asked wryly.

She could almost hear him rolling his eyes. “You know what I mean, _cher_.”

She hummed quietly. Would that be such a terrible idea? Every time she had thought about it before this week, she had instantly dismissed it as absurd. But now? “Patrolling together and having a few days off every week would be nice,” she finally told him.

“No matter what you decide, I’ll be here to help you,” Amelie announced. “I am excited to meet your flatmate, sweetie!”

“Thanks, Amelie,” Iron Maiden replied. She had just about reached the end of London’s city limits, so she turned to head south. “I’m… I’m glad I can count on you.”

“And of course you are always welcome to come by for tea,” continued Amelie.

“I may take you up on that!” agreed Iron Maiden. “Tomorrow afternoon?”

“I will see you then!”

Iron Maiden smiled as she continued her patrol circuit. Even after everything that had happened, she had her friends. She still had yet to tell her mother about the attack, though she had called to talk to her that afternoon before the Halloween party began. But despite not feeling safe talking about everything with her own mother, she had someone who could listen to her. A glance at her HUD showed it to be nearly two in the morning; her battery only had enough power left to return to her workshop. The streets below were largely empty as the trick-or-treaters had retired hours ago and even the bar crowds had started to disperse. “Ready to call it a night, Pup?”

“Ready whenever you are,” he agreed.

Turning back toward her workshop, she saw the Hound jogging along the street below her in the same direction. With a smirk, she dropped down until she was skimming along only a bit more than a meter above Southward Street. His miraculous ears perked up, his head started to turn, and he let out a surprised yelp as she scooped him up in her arms. “Just call me the dogcatcher!” she teased, and he immediately went still.

“You know, normally _I_ ’m the one picking up the girl, not the other way around,” he observed, grinning.

She rolled her eyes. “Really?” she deadpanned. “ _You_ ’ve managed to pick up a girl?”

“It can happen!” he insisted.

“No, I believe you,” she replied. She giggled. “I can’t help other girls’ low standards!”

“Yowch,” he grumbled. “How re- _pug_ -nant!”

Moments later she landed in front of the workshop doors, which opened automatically, and strode inside, the Hound beside her. At a command the doors shut and her suit back unsealed and opened. By the time she has slipped out of the suit, Felix had already detransformed, and Barkk was sitting on the workbench in front of a bag of beef jerky. Immediately Bri started examining her suit for signs of wear. The weather tonight hadn’t been too bad, though there was still a thin layer of condensation clinging to the metal.

Felix grabbed a clean rag off of the workbench. “How can I help?”

She gave him a look of surprise. “Well, if you don’t mind, could you start by wiping off my back?”

Felix nodded and moved around her to stop behind the suit. Bri knelt to check her legs, and tensed when she felt a cloth rubbing across her shoulder blades. She glanced up at Felix, who smirked.

“You said to wipe your back?” he pointed out cheekily, raising an eyebrow at her.

She rolled her eyes. “You knew what I meant.”

He stepped back and started running the cloth along the back of the suit, wiping away the water that had collected on the cold metal. “Still, the offer stands,” he told her.

They worked quietly for a few minutes, Felix wiping the suit off while Bri ran a diagnostic check and cleaned out the exhaust vents on her jetpack. Once she finished her snack, Barkk flitted around the workshop, picking up the pieces of scrap metal that had accumulated on the floor over the past week, some of which were larger than the Kwami herself. After he had finished drying the suit, Felix found another cloth and applied a layer of oil to the joints. Finally satisfied, Bri straightened up and nodded as Barkk alit on her head, curling up in her hair. “Thanks,” she told them, smiling. “That went so much faster with help. See you tomorrow?”

“Actually…” Felix began, turning away and running a hand through his hair awkwardly, “I was thinking I’d walk you back? I mean, the last time I didn’t…”

She tensed. A wild mane of windblown hair swam through her mind. She clenched her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe. But she could smell his breath! Suddenly a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders gently.

“ _Mon Fer_?” Her eyes shot open to find Felix looking at her with a worried expression on his face. “Are you okay?”

She nodded curtly and leaned the slightest bit into his shoulder. He immediately put one of his arms around her in a loose embrace. “That… that would be nice,” she finally agreed.

Quietly they walked along the well-worn path down the alley from her workshop to the Strand. Bri shrugged Felix’s arm off her shoulder and instead took his hand, clinging to it as a lifeline against the thoughts that threatened to return when they walked past the spot where she had almost died. Yes, she _had_ almost died her, but she had survived. She had stopped the man who had tried to kill her. And she’d had help from her friend and partner, the guy standing next to her, who’d been there during some of the darkest nights of her life in the last week. She squeezed his hand, and he smiled at her before squeezing back.

“So how are you _really_ , _mon Fer_?” he asked as they turned onto the Strand. “You don’t have to hide.”

She sighed, her lips turning down into a frown. So much had happened. So much _could_ have happened that hadn’t. “I’m not all the way there,” she admitted, “but I think I’m okay. At least for now.”

He nodded. “If you ever need anything – anything at all – I’m here,” he promised. “With the portals, you can stop in my room any time you want.”

She smirked and raised an eyebrow at him. “What? No comment about making sure none of your _other_ girlfriends see me?”

“The only other girl who’s ever in my room is Barkk, and she doesn’t mind.” They stopped on the building’s steps. He took both her hands in his, and his face took on a serious expression. “I mean it: any time you need me, I’m here for you. Any time you call, I’ll answer.”

Looking into his eyes, Bri smiled. She leaned forward and threw her arms around him in a quick hug. As he wrapped his own arms around her, she sighed and whispered, “Thanks, Pup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s the end of “The Darkest Nights”! Tomorrow will be a “Life and Times” one-shot, followed by an “SLD Case Report” and another “Life and Times” one-shot (that one with Bri and Felix). The next story will be “Group Therapy,” where Bri and Anne will both be appearing (for obvious reasons).

**Author's Note:**

> I have three notes for those who care about the accuracy. First, in researching for this story I realized there’s a small error in “The Hound and the Maiden”: I had assumed that King’s College had a library on the Strand Campus, but the Strand Campus library is actually about 8 minutes northeast from the rest of the campus. What is on the main campus is the college archives, so that’s where they actually were. Bri’s workshop is west of the main campus, about as far from the campus in the opposite direction as the Maughan Library where they were in this chapter. Second, the Strand Campus doesn’t have its own housing; the closest King’s College residence building is south of the Thames, which seems a little too far from where I put her workshop. So in this universe King’s College also has an apartment building about a block north of the Strand Campus, and that’s where they live. Finally, for the purposes of this story I’m assuming the library is open until 10 PM rather than the 5:30 PM that Google indicates (though whether that’s normal or COVID isn’t stated). Let me know if you are interested in all these little nitpicky real-world continuity things.


End file.
